Abstract
A central theme of the book is the question how to proceed practicing the law when a lawyer has acquired semiotic knowledge and skills. The very same issue is also a direct effect of considering the legal semiotic modus operandi. Semiotic steps in legal work are steps to take in texts. Before lawyers write, they read. What they read, even if it is a string of incoherent words, can be named a text. Everything Peirce said about the sign and its triadic embedding or Greimas about texts, belongs to a lawyer’s semiotic approach. That is an element of a lawyers’ self-awareness and professional attitude. The legal semiotics modus operandi requires no complicated application or sophisticated methods but a sharpened awareness about reading and texts. To be a lawyer begins with listening to- and reading spoken and written texts. Attention is therefore on (1) the particularities of a text, its superstructure, surface and engenderment, (2) on the Greimas squares as exemplified for daily uses in legal practice and (3) on the question why names play such a decisive meaningful role in law.
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- 1.
J.M. Balkin: “The Hohfeldian Approach To Law And Semiotics” In: 44 Miami L. Rev. 1990, 5. pp. 1119 ff; J.M. Balkin: “The Promise of Legal Semiotics” In: 69 Texas L. Rev 1990/91. pp 1831 ff., Jack M. Balkin: Critical Legal Theory Today In: Philosophy In American Law, Francis J. Mootz III (ed.) Op. Cit.; Jeremy Paul: “The Politics of Legal Semiotics” In: 69 Tex. L. Rev 1990–1991, pp. 1779 ff., Duncan Kennedy: “Semiotics of Critique” In: 22 Cardozo L. Rev. 2000–2002, p. 1151 ff.
- 2.
Paul J. Gudel, The Skepticism Of Critical Legal Studies And The Function Of Moral Discourse, Oct. 2010, p. 75; available http://works.bepress.com/paul_gudel/6.
- 3.
It surprises that Kevelson did not notice Paul’s text, which was central in legal scholarship, and that Paul did not mention any of Kevelson’s contributions to the same theme so shortly after she published her famous book “Law as a System of Signs” at the end of 1988. That omission in legal- and philosophical scholarship is still problematic.
- 4.
J.M. Balkin: “The Promise Of Legal Semiotics” In: 69 Texas L. Rev 1990/91. p. 1831 ff.
- 5.
See: Anne Wagner & Jan M. Broekman (Eds.): Prospects of Legal Semiotics, Op. Cit., 2010, Introduction, p. V ff.
- 6.
See Broekman/Mootz: The Semiotics of Law in Legal Education, Op. Cit., 2011.
- 7.
Duncan Kennedy: “Semiotics Of Critique” In: 22 Cardozo L. Rev. 2000–2002, p. 1151 ff.
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Broekman, J.M., Backer, L.C. (2013). Legal Theory and Semiotics: The Legal Semiotics Critical Approach. In: Lawyers Making Meaning. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5458-4_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5458-4_10
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