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Alternative Facts: The Strategy Of Judicial Rhetoric, Tonja Jacobi, Eryn Mascia
Alternative Facts: The Strategy Of Judicial Rhetoric, Tonja Jacobi, Eryn Mascia
Emory Law Journal
Studies have established the influence of ideology on the answers justices give to legal questions; this study shows that the questions themselves are often selected, framed, and phrased in a way that promotes ideologically-driven answers. By examining a variety of linguistic techniques used to describe just the facts of constitutional criminal procedure cases—separate from the legal analysis—we show the justices are engaging in highly strategic behavior. The facts included, omitted, or emphasized vary with the ideology of the justices and are predictable not just based on voting behavior in other criminal procedure cases but in all Supreme Court cases. We …
Linguistics In The Courtroom: Incorporating Considerations Of Language And Context To Improve Criminal Court Consent Analysis, Danielle Bimston
Linguistics In The Courtroom: Incorporating Considerations Of Language And Context To Improve Criminal Court Consent Analysis, Danielle Bimston
Emory Law Journal
A legal conundrum occurs every day: suspects regularly incriminate themselves by voluntarily granting their verbal consent to requested searches by law enforcement officers, yet later move to suppress on the basis that they never agreed to such a thing. When these disputes arise, fact finders are left to adjudicate a fundamentally linguistic issue—whether the presence of voluntary consent existed. Herein lies the problem. The current totality test that is used to make this determination gives judges enormous discretionary power to evaluate the merits of the case, but is completely devoid of methodology grounded in linguistic theory that could guide the …