Abstract

Developed from a one-day symposium at the University of Tilburg, this collection of papers explores the semiotic foundations of legislation as viewed from jurisprudential, institutional and sociological perspectives. They pose such questions as: the audience of legislation; the relations between legislative and judicial discourse; the contributions of speech act theory; the effectiveness of legislation and its meaning in non-legal discourse; and the creation of a supra-national form of constitutional discourse, that of Europe.