Law Commons^™

Polysemy And The Law, Daniel J. Hemel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Polysemy-the existence of multiple related meanings for the same word or phrase-is a frequent phenomenon in legal and lay language. Although polysemy sometimes arises by accident, it also can be strategic: framers of legal rules can advance private and public interests by assigning meanings to terms that are different from-though connected to-the meanings that those terms carry outside the law. Understanding the functions of polysemy can help us design more effective legal rules and can shed light on ways in which legal actors translate language into power.

This Article undertakes a comprehensive analysis of polysemy's origins, uses, and consequences across …

Emerging Technology's Language Wars: Cryptocurrency, Carla L. Reyes

William & Mary Law Review

Work at the intersection of blockchain technology and law suffers from a distinct linguistic disadvantage. As a highly interdisciplinary area of inquiry, legal researchers, lawmakers, researchers in the technical sciences, and the public all talk past each other, using the same words, but as different terms of art. Evidence of these language wars largely derives from anecdote. To better assess the nature and scope of the problem, this Article uses corpus linguistics to reveal the inherent value conflicts embedded in definitional differences and debates related to developing regulation in one specific area of the blockchain technology ecosystem: cryptocurrency. Using cryptocurrency …

The History Of The Plain Language Movement And Legal Language And An Analysis Of Us Nuclear Treaty Language, Hannah Bradford Clauss

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Drive To Advise: A Study Of Law Students At A Pro Bono Brief Advice Project, Linda F. Smith

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Legal Language: Expansion, Consolidation, Resistance, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

Legal language in America, a species of the political discourse of popular sovereignty, underwent significant changes during the nineteenth century. Beyond dramatic changes in the technologies of language, two major sociolegal dynamics of political development drove linguistic innovation during the nineteenth century: expansion and consolidation. Religious revivals and political reform movements, including a number of utopian projects, spread the language of liberty and popular consent as groups migrated west. The sensational 1829 pamphlet known as Walker's Appeal turned America's language of political liberty against the slave trade. David Walker, a former slave, directed his words primarily to the colored people …

Introductory Statement, Rosalyn Higgins

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Language Of Data Privacy Law (And How It Differs From Reality), Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson, Orla Lynskey, Christopher Millard

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Making Judge-Speak Clear Amidst The Babel Of Lawspeakers, Michael A. Wolff

Missouri Law Review

As law became more of a publicly traded commodity in the 1990s, courts, including the Supreme Court of Missouri, began to hire public information officers. It may strike you as odd, when you think about it, as to why a court that communicates with words would need someone assigned to explain to the wordsmiths of the media – and sometimes to the public itself – what judges meant by the collections of words in their judicial opinions. But today, we take it for granted that public information officers are essential to the operation of a state supreme court, and although …

The Importance Of Interpretation: How The Language Of The Constitution Allows For Differing Opinions, Christina J. Banfield

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Why Plain Meaning, David A. Strauss

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Misreading And Mobility In Constitutional Texts: A Nineteenth Century Case, Iza Hussin

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article explores the case of the adoption of Southeast Asia's first constitution (Johor, 1895) to articulate a fundamental problem of translation-the ambiguity and multiplicity of law's language. Closer attention to this problem helps raise a number of possibilities for rethinking the relationship between law, language, and mobility: firstly, polyphony, dissonance, and divergence in law's language reveals a plethora of political possibilities, audiences, and actors in the making of law; secondly, these ambiguities and multiplicities are integral to law's mobility; thirdly, rather than transmissions of law from center to periphery, law moves in circulations that are iterative, contingent, and patterned. …

“What We’Ve Got Here Is Failure To Communicate”: The Plain Writing Act Of 2010, Rachel Stabler

Articles

No abstract provided.

Straying From The Written Path: How The Supreme Court Eviscerated The Plain Meaning Of The Mvra’S Ninety-Day Deadline Provision And Legislated From The Bench In Dolan V. United States, Alexander J. Sisemore

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

The "Existing Indian Family" Exception To The Indian Child Welfare Act: The States' Attempt To Slaughter Tribal Interests In Indian Children, Cheyañna L. Jaffke

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction To Language In The Justice System, By John Gibbons, Drury Stevenson

University of Colorado Law Review

John Gibbons's book Forensic Linguistics provides an excellent introduction to the different areas of interdisciplinary studies involving linguistics and law. Gibbons explores many of the unique linguistic features of legal writing and courtroom speech, and discusses legal regulation of inappropriate uses of language (threats, lies, etc). This review surveys each of these sections of Gibbons's work, and adds in depth critique on issues related to "audience design " in legal documents and the linguistic pitfalls of relying on trial transcripts.

2003 - A Year Of Discovery: Cybergenics And Plain Meaning In Bankruptcy Cases, Marjorie O. Rendell

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Discrepancy In Bankruptcy Code Section 330: Can A Chapter 7 Debtor's Attorney Collect Fees From The Bankruptcy Estate?, Frank Misiti

Hofstra Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law As Language (Reviewing Peter M. Tiersma, Legal Language (1999)), Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

The jacket of Professor Peter Tiersma’s book Legal Language illustrates the problem inherent in a linguistic study of legal language. The jacket features a legal document in fine print, with an overlay of a magnifying glass that brings some of the indecipherable words into focus. The problem, of course, is that a scholar conducting a linguistic study of language does not have access to a distinct "magnifying glass" that can posit language as an object; he can study language only with language.

Tiersma attempts to avoid the most difficult problems of self-reference that follow from the "interpretive turn" in social …

The Evolution Of Chutzpah As A Legal Term: The Chutzpah Championship, Chutzpah Award, Chutzpah Doctrine, And Now, The Supreme Court, Jack Achiezer Guggenheim

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Law And Linguistics: Is There Common Ground?, William D. Popkin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

When The Plain Meaning Of A Statute Is Not So Plain: The Supreme Court's Interpretation Of Rcra's Clarification Of The Household Waste Exclusion: City Of Chicago V. Environmental Defense Fund, Emily Abbott

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Patriarchy, Paternalism, And The Masks Of Fetal Protection., A. Kimberley Dayton

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a response to John Kennedy's defense of Johnson Controls, Inc.'s fetal protection policy which was struck down last year in International Union, UAW v. Johnson Controls, Inc. A unanimous Supreme Court held in the case that the policy, which excluded women from a "fetotoxic" workplace, violated the federal employment discrimination laws. The Court's decision was issued only a day before Kennedy was scheduled to debate the issue of whether Title VII bars fetal protection policies with Professor Elinor Schroeder at the Kansas Journal's first symposium on March 21-22. 1991. The Court's decision rendered the technical statutory issues …

The Invisible Discourse Of The Law: Reflections On Legal Literacy And General Education, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

Almost everyone who is not trained in the law has struggled to understand legal documents, such as contracts and guarantees - not because they read poorly but because they lack legal knowledge and experience with legal language. Readers can experience the same difficulty in other fields such as philosophy, literary theory, or economics; it takes time to gain the knowledge required to become an expert reader in these areas. However, between the extremes of the trained legal expert and the complete novice is "another possible meaning of legal literacy: the degree of competence in legal discourse that is required for …

Excursions Into The Nature Of Legal Language, Mary Jane Morrison

Cleveland State Law Review

In this article, I explore some of the truths on each side of the issue of whether the language of the law is a technical language and whether lawyers speak in a technical language when they speak with each other about the law. In Part I of this article, I examine the due process limitations on the thesis that the law is in a technical language and I draw distinctions between speaking carefully and speaking technically. In Part II, I set out the technical language views of H.L.A. Hart and Charles Caton. By taking back-bearings on the views of Hart …

Writing In A Different Voice, Elizabeth Perry Hodges

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Should Plain English Be Legislated?, F. Reed Dickerson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Mellinkoff: The Language Of The Law, Ronald L. Goldfarb

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Language of the Law. By David Mellinkoff