In institutional legal theory, norms and facts are reciprocally operating elements: an interplay in which meaning construction is closely connected with acting: the pragmatic understanding of legal language in terms of its uses. With the semiotic elements of institutional theory, extended by the notion of ‘semiotic groups’, an analytical framework can be constructed to analyze a case study on the shifts in the concept of war which have taken place since the 1945 UN Charter and in the aftermath of 9/11. (...) The semiotic aspects of the institutional approach can offer insight into the complexity of the processes of meaning attribution in the field of law and war. (shrink)

Kevelson remains an important figure in legal semiotics, a co-founder, along with Bernard Jackson, of the International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law, and of course a valuable and seminal commentator on Peirce in the legal domain. This paper will examine her claim, that through his collaboration with and influence on Oliver Holmes, Peirce should be regarded as a foundational figure in a history of legal realism and modern jurisprudence, and that a legal semiotic can be identified in and not (...) only extrapolated from his seminal writings. This paper will contend that the relationship between Peirce and Holmes should be seen as perplexed and disputatious, rather than close and directly influential, as Kevelson argues. However, regardless of its limitations, Kevelson’s historical inquiry helps provide the ground for a contemporary and historical account of the full picture of a Peircean based legal semiotic and jurisprudence. (shrink)

This paper connects to Jon Bing’s great vision of an integrated national legal information system. The intention of this paper is to variegate Bing’s vision of an integrated information system by shifting the focus to the lay users, thus to those, who are subject to the law. The modified vision is an integrated information system that supports intelligible access to law for the citizens. This presupposes however an unambiguous and transparent legal system. Accordingly, it is also stressed that intelligent legal (...) knowledge engineering has high potential to increase precision and rationality in law, and hence safeguard the predictability of law and legal certainty. The central hypothesis is that putting the person who is subject to the law at the centre provides more rational reason to aim for the greatest possible precision of law by exploiting the means and technologies of our time than to uphold strategic vagueness. On this basis, the paper proposes the development of a basic set of controllable and justiciable basic legal drafting standards on EU and on national level, and promotes a transparency by design approach for legal knowledge engineering in order to enhance precision, integrity, comprehensibility and accessibility of law. Similarly to Jon Bing’s vision, this modified vision of an integrated legal information systems is, most probably, also likely to remain unfulfilled. However, what would science be without visions and (science) fictions? (shrink)

This paper deals with the particularities of vagueness in law. Thereby the question of the law’s capacity for vagueness is closely related to the question of the impact of vagueness in law, since exaggerated vagueness combined with the elasticity of legal interpretation methodology may affect the constitutional principles of legal certainty, the division of powers, and the binding force of statute. To represent vagueness and the instability of legal concepts and rules, a Hyperbola of Meaning is introduced, opposing Heck’s metaphor (...) of a core and a periphery of meaning. Furthermore, evidence is provided that the use of vague legal concepts and the capability of legal methodology to affect the specific meaning of those concepts, may give rise to astonishing and irrational changes of meaning of the law. Finally the paper sets out in search of an added value of vagueness in law, and weighs several stated pros and contras of vagueness. The paper is written against a background of the German speaking realm. (shrink)

Intangible cultural heritage is an invaluable treasure for human being and China is a country endowed with rich ICH. Among all the measures of safeguarding ICH, intellectual property tools are effective while controversial. As China started relatively late in the legal protection of ICH, the gap between legislation and judiciary needs to be filled in. This study examines the IP protection of ICH in China based on the current laws and regulations and then provides a semiotic approach to the relevant (...) legal evolution in China. This study, taking in some experiences outside China, goes further to provide recommendations for improving the IP protection in China. (shrink)

This article reviews the opportunities for legal semiotics to contribute to legal philosophy, legal sociology, the reading of legal texts and the analysis of legal language (with bibliography) and surveys the institutional development of legal semiotics.

The paper analyzes the sacred foundations of Western institutional order, moving from an epistemological, historical and legal–aesthetic perspective. Firstly, it identifies an epistemological theory of complexity which, pursuing Hayek’s theory of complexity, Robilant’s notion of informative–normative systems, Popper’s theory of the Worlds, and Dupuy’s theory of endogenous fixed point, will conclusively lead to presenting the hypothesis of World 0 as the World of the foundation of legal thinking, the home of the sacred and the aesthetic. Secondly, it identifies the axiological (...) character of the legal aesthetic as a discipline, a topic that will be taken up in relation to the work of the French historian of canonical law and psychoanalyst Legendre, starting from the analysis of a legal/historiographical context (Corpus Iuris Civilis, Corpus Iuris Canonici, Hobbesian Leviathan, Kelsenian Grundnorm). Thirdly, following Ellul’s thought on secularization, the idea that we now live in a secularized, lay society, lacking in the sacred is revealed as a sort of illusion, the creation of a myth of modernity, only apparently rational. Finally the paper proposes as the task of legal theory the identification of the system of “nomograms” in which the normative message is organized, according to a nonreductionistic approach that forces legal theory to recognize the plurality of the iconic forms of the normative message. The “nomograms” respond to the need of extending the field of legal science to phenomena that the positivist theory of law does not consider important, but which the process of evolution of contemporary society imposes. (shrink)

This paper presents a specific concept of the legal system, bringing a contribution to the Theory of Law, from the line of analysis of the Semiotics of Law. The entire methodological approach of this concept is based on the contributions of the École de Paris, from a theoretical-semiotic perspective derived from the studies of Algirdas Julien Greimas. The analysis seeks to further and qualify previous studies and publications, and focuses on the task of presenting the concept of juridicity, deriving the (...) description of the concept of the legal system from it, understood as a set of connections between legal texts. Consequently, the paper presents a Mesh Model for the description of the legal system, replacing the positivist concept of the Pyramid Model, through restoring the relationship between Law and Moral, between Law and Society and Law and Justice. Throughout the theoretical explanation, the paper tries to trace, develop and qualify the main points with arguments that distinguish the operation of the legal system, such as the concentric movement, micro-universes of meaning, discursive practices, the task of legal actors, dynamic inter-textuality, the role of interpretation, the process of the production of legal meaning and the search for textual justice. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the issues of the indeterminacy of law and judicial discretion in the decision of the quaestio facti. It is composed of four papers: In the first paper, I develop an account of legal indeterminacy called the ‘systemic indeterminacy’ thesis. This thesis claims that legal indeterminacy and judicial discretion are the results of features of the structure of typical rational legal systems such as interpretative codes with a plurality of interpretative directives, the non-redundancy clause, and the non-liquet rule. (...) In the second paper, I criticise two approaches that support the thesis that law ought to ascertain the truth of the quaestio facti: the motivation approach and the legal approach. First, I advance two objections to a version of the motivation approach that I call the ‘behaviour-guidance’ theory. The first objection claims that the appearance of ascertaining the truth is enough to produce the psychological state of compliance. The second objection claims that the indeterminacy of law brings about the impossibility of an ex ante knowledge of the content of the law, thus, the governed cannot gain knowledge of the law’s efforts to ascertain the truth. Second, I explore if the legal approach is plausible. I provide five different legal reasons to support the claim that the law ought to ascertain the truth of the quaestio facti. However, I show that none of these reasons are particularly convincing. In the third paper, I advance three objections to the idea of reducing the indeterminacy of the standard of proof rules by adding new legal rules for their interpretation. The first objection claims that these interpretative rules, do not provide any guidance to the trier of fact to set the quantum of evidence. The second objection claims that insofar as these interpretative rules are posited in a natural language they are also indeterminate. The third objection claims that these interpretative rules are redundant legal rules. In the fourth paper, I develop the thesis that standards of proof are competence norms that grant competence to triers of fact to set the quantum of evidence in a case-by-case manner. (shrink)

SOCREAL 2013 : 3rd International Workshop on Philosophy and Ethics of Social Reality 2013. Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, 25-27 October 2013. Session 2 : Imperatives and Norms.