Families of Meaning: Dismantling the Boundaries between Law and Society

Abstract

Legal positivism insists upon adistinction between the inside and outside oflaw. While critical theorists have illustratedthe ways in which the lines are always blurredthere remains a perceived distinction, in law,between the interpretation of concepts thatoccurs in the law and that which occursoutside the law. Only the former havelegal legitimacy. The idea of the legal familyis a case in point, where the law definesfamily according to its own prescriptionsirrespective of how the family is constitutedby non-legal communities. In this paper I seekto develop a mechanism by which the law canacknowledge and affirm that which is `outside'. This requires, firstly, a conception of law ascommunication. Secondly, the task demands that jurists engage with the semiotic processes ofthe everyday and that legal concepts, at leastthose that exist independently of the law(`family' for example) be framed with a moreopen indexicality. This might enable suchconcepts to be interpreted according to a rangeof contexts, other than (or in addition to) thelegal one.