Obscurity and Clarity in the Law


Book Description

This book explores the intricate and multi-dimensional conception of clarity and obscurity in the law. It presents and examines the most recent research and theories, giving practical guidance on how to avoid obscurity in legal drafting and its impact on legal interpretation. The book is aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seeks to promote an interdisciplinary debate on clarity, law and language, calling for the moving of clarity beyond the study of plain language. The aims of the book are thus two fold. The first is to critically reach a nexus between the disciplines of law and language with respect to the debates on clarity in legal discourse. The second is to achieve an international perspective on the issue, drawing from a wide range of legal and political contexts.




Legal Language and the Search for Clarity


Book Description

This interdisciplinary collection with contributions in English and French explores how the various disciplines of law and linguistics appreciate and work towards improving the nature of clarity and obscurity in legal language. For the first time, it brings together legal academics and practitioners, jurilinguists and linguists from the common law and civil law with the specific aim to understand the complex nature, practice and tools of clarity and obscurity in legal drafting. Topics addressed include how the Clarity framework has been put into practice through the use of plainer language, better comprehensibility, readability and access to legal or administrative texts. In an attempt to reflect the more recent development of the Clarity-Obscurity debate, the editors have also focused on the use of specific instruments to respond to the problems raised by obscurity to improve clarity. Cette collection interdisciplinaire offrant des contributions en anglais et en français, explore comment les diverses disciplines du droit et de la linguistique appréhendent et visent à perfectionner la nature de la clarté et de l'opacité du discours juridique. Cet ouvrage rassemblant pour la première fois, des universitaires et professionnels du droit, des jurilinguistes et linguistes de la common law and et du droit civil, propose de découvrir la nature complexe, les pratiques et outils de la clarté et de l'opacité utilisés en rédaction juridique. Les questions abordées examinent la mise en pratique de la clarté juridique au travers de l'utilisation de la langue courante, une meilleure lisibilité, compréhensibilité et accès aux textes juridiques et administratifs. Dans le but de refléter l'actualité du débat Clarté-Opacité du discours juridique, les éditrices se sont également concentrées sur l'utilisation des outils et méthodes les plus récents et utilisés pour résoudre les difficultés soulevées par l'opacité des langues du droit et ainsi améliorer la transparence du discours juridique.




House of Commons Debates


Book Description







The Literary and Legal Genealogy of Native American Dispossession


Book Description

The Literary and Legal Genealogy of Native American Dispossession offers a unique interpretation of how literary and public discourses influenced three U.S. Supreme Court Rulings written by Chief Justice John Marshall with respect to Native Americans. These cases, Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823), Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), collectively known as the Marshall Trilogy, have formed the legal basis for the dispossession of indigenous populations throughout the Commonwealth. The Trilogy cases are usually approached as ‘pure’ legal judgments. This book maintains, however, that it was the literary and public discourses from the early sixteenth through to the early nineteenth centuries that established a discursive tradition which, in part, transformed the American Indians from owners to ‘mere occupants’ of their land. Exploring the literary genesis of Marshall’s judgments, George Pappas draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, to analyse how these formative U.S. Supreme Court rulings blurred the distinction between literature and law.




Women, Work And Sexual Politics In Eighteenth-Century England


Book Description

The author offers a reassessment of how women's experience of work in 18th- century England was affected by industrialization and other elements of economic, social and technological change.; This study focuses on the household, the most important unit of production in the 18th century. Hill examines the work done by the women of the household, not only in "housework" but also in agriculture and manufacturing, and explains what women lost as the household's independence as a unit of economic production was undermined.; Considering the whole range of activities in which women were involved - including many occupations unrecorded in censuses which have, therefore, been largely ignored by historians - Hill charts the increasing sexual division of labour and highlights its implications. She also discusses the role of service in husbandry and apprenticeship, as sources of training for women, and the consequences of their decline.; The final part of the book considers how the changing nature of women's work influenced courtship, marriage and relations between the sexes. Among the topics discussed are the importance of the women's contribution to setting up and maintaining a household; labouring women's attitudes to marriage and divorce and the customary alternatives to them; and the role of spinsters and widows. The author concludes by asking to what extent the industrial revolution improved the overall position of women and the opportunities open to them.; This series aims to re-establish women's history, and to challenge the assumptions of much mainstream history. Focusing on the modern period and encouraging perspectives from other disciplines, it seeks to concentrate upon areas of focal importance in the history of Britain and continental Europe.; Bridget Hill is the author of "Eighteenth-Century Women: An Anthology" and "The First English Feminist".




Approaches to Videogame Discourse


Book Description

The first significant collection of research in videogame linguistics, Approaches to Videogame Discourse features an international array of scholars in linguistics and communication studies exploring lexis, interaction and textuality in digital games. In the first section, “Lexicology, Localisation and Variation,” chapters cover productive processes surrounding gamer slang (ludolects), creativity and borrowing across languages, as well as industry-, genre-, game- and player-specific issues relating to localization, legal jargon and slang. “Player Interactions” moves on to examine communicative patterns between videogame players, focusing in particular on (un)collaborative language, functions and negotiations of impoliteness and issues of power in player discourse. In the final section, “Beyond the 'Text',” scholars grapple with issues of multimodality, paratextuality and transmediality in videogames in order to develop and enrich multimodal theory, drawing on key concepts from ludonarratology, language ideology, immersion and transmedia studies. With implications for meaningful game design and communication theory, Approaches to Videogame Discourse examines in detail how video games function as means and objects of communication; how they give rise to new vocabularies, textual genres and discourse practices; and how they serve as rich vehicles of ideological signification and social engagement.




Nullum Crimen Sine Lege, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Foreseeability of the Law


Book Description

Das Buch untersucht nullum crimen sine lege als europäischen Grundsatz. Die Untersuchung konzentriert sich auf die Rolle der Vorhersehbarkeit als Lösung für die Legalitätsprobleme, die sich aus dem Richterrecht im Strafrecht ergeben. Die Vorhersehbarkeit und seine Entwicklung werden in der Rechtsprechung des EGMR untersucht. Aktuelle Lösungen, die von Zivilrechtsstaaten (Italien und Deutschland) angenommen wurden, werden auch unter Berücksichtigung der theoretischen Grundlagen von ncsl analysiert. Darüber hinaus wird die Rolle der Vorhersehbarkeit im EU-Recht als Beispiel für eine wirkungsorientierte Rechtsordnung betrachtet. Abschließend werden Zukunftsperspektiven für die Umsetzung der Vorhersehbarkeit analysiert.




Judicial Writing


Book Description

To validate their institutional continuance as a branch of government, writes Chinua Asuzu, judges must make sound decisions. They must also articulate and express those decisions efficiently and comprehensibly. This book shows how. This book will help judges, arbitrators, and other decision-writers master the art and science of judicial writing. A most welcome guide, Judicial Writing: A Benchmark for the Benchsets a high, yet attainable, standard of excellence for writing judicial decisions. It will no doubt become the reference point for judging judges and their judgments. Chinua Asuzu is that uncommon lawyer who wrote The Uncommon Law of Learned Writing. His other works includeAnatomy of a Brief andFair Hearing in Nigeria. A versatile arbitrator, Asuzu served as an administrative-law judge at the Tax Appeal Tribunal in Nigeria from 2010 to 2016.He is now the Senior Partner of Assizes Lawfirm, a team of tax lawyers.




Clarity and obscurity in legal texts - a case study: a comparative linguistic analysis of the brazilian civil code of 2002 and of that of 1916


Book Description

O trabalho enfoca a relação entre linguagem e Direito, apontando odistanciamento entre a linguagem legal e a linguagem do homem médio. Tendopor base o estudo comparativo de segmentos do Código Civil brasileiro de 1916e de 2002, relativamente ao Direito das Sucessões, analisam-se questõespertinentes à estruturação sintática, à utilização vocabular e à presença deambigüidades estruturais. Busca-se, assim, identificar os principais fatoresresponsáveis pelas dificuldades enfrentadas pelo homem médio ao interpretartextos legais. O estudo, valendo-se de uma pesquisa realizada junto ainformantes, constata que houve um certo progresso quanto à linguagemadotada no Código Civil de 2002, em face à do de 1916. Aponta, contudo, que oprogresso realizado está muito aquém do desejável, dado que, na virtualtotalidade dos casos, alternativas de redação propostas pela autora forampreferidas às correlatamente encontradas no Código de 2002. A pesquisa voltase, também, para a identificação de marcas lingüísticas evidenciadoras demudanças axiológicas ocorridas na sociedade brasileira desde a promulgação doCódigo de 1916, e refletidas no de 2002. A dissertação discute as relações entrelinguagem e poder e destaca a perversidade da coexistência da ficção, juridicamente necessária, de que a ninguém é dado escusar-se de cumprir a leialegando o seu desconhecimento com a perpetuação de uma linguagem jurídicaobscura e proliferação irrefreada de leis. Defende, assim, a adoção de umalinguagem jurídica que, ao invés de afastar o homem médio do conhecimento deseus direitos e deveres em face da sociedade, se torne um meio propiciadordesse conhecimento.