Download or read book The Language of Judges written by Lawrence M. Solan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since many legal disputes are battles over the meaning of a statute, contract, testimony, or the Constitution, judges must interpret language in order to decide why one proposed meaning overrides another. And in making their decisions about meaning appear authoritative and fair, judges often write about the nature of linguistic interpretation. In the first book to examine the linguistic analysis of law, Lawrence M. Solan shows that judges sometimes inaccurately portray the way we use language, creating inconsistencies in their decisions and threatening the fairness of the judicial system. Solan uses a wealth of examples to illustrate the way linguistics enters the process of judicial decision making: a death penalty case that the Supreme Court decided by analyzing the use of adjectives in a jury instruction; criminal cases whose outcomes depend on the Supreme Court's analysis of the relationship between adverbs and prepositional phrases; and cases focused on the meaning of certain words in the Constitution. Solan finds that judges often describe our use of language poorly because there is no clear relationship between the principles of linguistics and the jurisprudential goals that the judge wishes to promote. A major contribution to the growing interdisciplinary scholarship on law and its social and cultural context, Solan's lucid, engaging book is equally accessible to linguists, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, literary theorists, and political scientists.
Download or read book Law Language and the Courtroom written by Stanislaw Gozdz Roszkowski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the language of judges. It is concerned with understanding how language works in judicial contexts. Using a range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, it looks in detail at the ways in which judicial discourse is argued, constructed, interpreted and perceived. Focusing on four central themes - constructing judicial discourse and judicial identities, judicial argumentation and evaluative language, judicial interpretation, and clarity in judicial discourse - the book’s ultimate goal is to provide a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of current critical issues of the role of language in judicial settings. Contributors include legal linguists, lawyers, legal scholars, legal practitioners, legal translators and anthropologists, who explore patterns of linguistic organisation and use in judicial institutions and analyse language as an instrument for understanding both the judicial decision-making process and its outcome. The book will be an invaluable resource for scholars in legal linguistics and those specialising in judicial argumentation and reasoning ,and forensic linguists interested in the use of language in judicial settings.
Download or read book Judges and the Language of Law written by Matthew Williams and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at how the language of the law has changed over time, and how this has empowered judges. In particular it looks at how this has empowered judges to rule against governments.
Download or read book Judges and the Language of Law written by Matthew Williams and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Matthew Williams' masterful analysis, which straddles history, law and political science, causes us to rethink key theories of the judicialization of politics. His work is a tour de force that will be appreciated not only for its combination of computational text analysis and process tracing histories, but also for its expansive ambition, covering seven decades and five jurisdictions." - Petra Schleiter, Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Oxford, United Kingdom "We live in an age of data and data analytics. Analysing huge swathes of legislative text across time and jurisdictions, Matthew Williams has revealed a series of fascinating changes in language use. This clearly written book with its compelling narrative is an important contribution to our understanding of law and policy in the 21st century." - Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Computer Science, University of Oxford, United Kingdom By machine reading 60,556,672 words of legislation, and analysing 7,469 country years, this book uncovers changing patterns in the language of laws. In addition to this wide angle, a tight focus on five countries - Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US - reveals the effects of changing legal language on policy power for judges. With this new perspective and new data, the book explains how and why judges have become more actively involved in public policy disputes on such sensitive topics as abortion, human rights and terrorism. Matthew Williams is Tutor and Fellow of Jesus College, University of Oxford, UK. He lectures on British and comparative politics. His research analyses the language of politics, how the language of legislation has changed over the past century, and the effects of these changes on litigation strategies and public administration.
Download or read book Legal Language written by Peter M. Tiersma and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of legal language slices through the polysyllabic thicket of legalese. The text shows to what extent legalese is simply a product of its past and demonstrates that arcane vocabulary is not an inevitable feature of our legal system.
Download or read book Ideology in the Language of Judges written by Susan U. Philips and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-04-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study that will appeal to any reader interested in the relationship between our language and our laws, Ideology in the Language of Judges focuses on the way judges take guilty pleas from criminal defendants and on the judges' views of their own courtroom behavior. This book argues that variation in the discourse structure of the guilty pleas can best be understood as enactments of the judges' differing interpretations of due process law and the proper role of the judge in the courtroom. Susan Philips demonstrates how legal and professional ideologies are expressed differently in interviews and socially occurring speech, and reveals how bounded written and spoken genres of legal discourse play a role in containing and ordering ideological diversity in language use. She also shows how the ideological struggles in a given courtroom are central yet largely hidden or denied. Such findings will contribute significantly to the study of how speakers create realities through their use of language.
Download or read book The Lawyer Judge Bias in the American Legal System written by Benjamin H. Barton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtually all American judges are former lawyers. This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in their decisions and that this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law. There are many reasons for this bias, some obvious and some subtle. Fundamentally, it occurs because - regardless of political affiliation, race, or gender - every American judge shares a single characteristic: a career as a lawyer. This shared background results in the lawyer-judge bias. The book begins with a theoretical explanation of why judges naturally favor the interests of the legal profession and follows with case law examples from diverse areas, including legal ethics, criminal procedure, constitutional law, torts, evidence, and the business of law. The book closes with a case study of the Enron fiasco, an argument that the lawyer-judge bias has contributed to the overweening complexity of American law, and suggests some possible solutions.
Download or read book Legal Writing written by Robert Edwin Bacharach and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A magnificent book on writing. Drawing on the lessons from psycholinguistics and rhetoric, Judge Bacharach has written a remarkably practical book on how to write effectively. Judge Bacharach illustrates his points with very specific suggestions and countless examples from briefs from top lawyers and opinions of judges. I learned so much from this wonderful book." -- Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean, Berkeley School of Law
Download or read book Language in the Judicial Process written by Judith N. Levi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legal realism is a powerful jurisprudential tradition which urges attention to sodal conditions and predicts their influence in the legal process. The rela tively recent "sodal sdence in the law" phenomenon, in which sodal research is increasingly relied on to dedde court cases is a direct result of realistic jurisprudence, which accords much significance in law to empirical reports about sodal behavior. The empirical research used by courts has not, how ever, commonly dealt with language as an influential variable. This volume of essays, coedited by Judith N. Levi and Anne Graffam Walker, will likely change that situation. Language in the Judicial Process is a superb collection of original work which fits weIl into the realist tradition, and by focusing on language as a key variable, it establishes a new and provocative perspective on the legal process. The perspective it offers, and the data it presents, make this volume a valuable source of information both for judges and lawyers, who may be chiefly concemed with practice, and for legal scholars and sodal sdentists who do basic research about law.
Download or read book The Language of Judges written by Lawrence M. Solan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1993-04-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since many legal disputes are battles over the meaning of a statute, contract, testimony, or the Constitution, judges must interpret language in order to decide why one proposed meaning overrides another. And in making their decisions about meaning appear authoritative and fair, judges often write about the nature of linguistic interpretation. In the first book to examine the linguistic analysis of law, Lawrence M. Solan shows that judges sometimes inaccurately portray the way we use language, creating inconsistencies in their decisions and threatening the fairness of the judicial system. Solan uses a wealth of examples to illustrate the way linguistics enters the process of judicial decision making: a death penalty case that the Supreme Court decided by analyzing the use of adjectives in a jury instruction; criminal cases whose outcomes depend on the Supreme Court's analysis of the relationship between adverbs and prepositional phrases; and cases focused on the meaning of certain words in the Constitution. Solan finds that judges often describe our use of language poorly because there is no clear relationship between the principles of linguistics and the jurisprudential goals that the judge wishes to promote. A major contribution to the growing interdisciplinary scholarship on law and its social and cultural context, Solan's lucid, engaging book is equally accessible to linguists, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, literary theorists, and political scientists.
Download or read book Judging Statutes written by Robert A. Katzmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an ideal world, the laws of Congress--known as federal statutes--would always be clearly worded and easily understood by the judges tasked with interpreting them. But many laws feature ambiguous or even contradictory wording. How, then, should judges divine their meaning? Should they stick only to the text? To what degree, if any, should they consult aids beyond the statutes themselves? Are the purposes of lawmakers in writing law relevant? Some judges, such as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, believe courts should look to the language of the statute and virtually nothing else. Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit respectfully disagrees. In Judging Statutes, Katzmann, who is a trained political scientist as well as a judge, argues that our constitutional system charges Congress with enacting laws; therefore, how Congress makes its purposes known through both the laws themselves and reliable accompanying materials should be respected. He looks at how the American government works, including how laws come to be and how various agencies construe legislation. He then explains the judicial process of interpreting and applying these laws through the demonstration of two interpretative approaches, purposivism (focusing on the purpose of a law) and textualism (focusing solely on the text of the written law). Katzmann draws from his experience to show how this process plays out in the real world, and concludes with some suggestions to promote understanding between the courts and Congress. When courts interpret the laws of Congress, they should be mindful of how Congress actually functions, how lawmakers signal the meaning of statutes, and what those legislators expect of courts construing their laws. The legislative record behind a law is in truth part of its foundation, and therefore merits consideration.
Download or read book Just Words written by John M. Conley and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it “just words” when a lawyer cross-examines a rape victim in the hopes of getting her to admit an interest in her attacker? Is it “just words” when the Supreme Court hands down a decision or when business people draw up a contract? In tackling the question of how an abstract entity exerts concrete power, Just Words focuses on what has become the central issue in law and language research: what language reveals about the nature of legal power. John M. Conley, William M. O'Barr, and Robin Conley Riner show how the microdynamics of the legal process and the largest questions of justice can be fruitfully explored through the field of linguistics. Each chapter covers a language-based approach to a different area of the law, from the cross-examinations of victims and witnesses to the inequities of divorce mediation. Combining analysis of common legal events with a broad range of scholarship on language and law, Just Words seeks the reality of power in the everyday practice and application of the law. As the only study of its type, the book is the definitive treatment of the topic and will be welcomed by students and specialists alike. This third edition brings this essential text up to date with new chapters on nonverbal, or “multimodal,” communication in legal settings and law, language, and race.
Download or read book What s Law Got to Do With It written by Charles Gardner Geyh and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Top US legal scholars and political scientists examine how the law shapes judges’ behavior and decisions, and what it means for society at large. Although there is a growing consensus among legal scholars and political scientists, significant points of divergence remain. Contributors to What’s Law Got to Do with It? explore ways to reach greater accord on the complexity and nuance of judicial decision making and judicial elections, while acknowledging that agreement on what judges do is not likely to occur any time soon. As the first forum in which political scientists and legal scholars engage with one another on these hot button issues, this volume strives to establish a true interdisciplinary conversation. The inclusion of reactions from practicing judges puts into high relief the deep-seated and opposing beliefs about the roles of law and politics in judicial work. Praise for What’s Law Got to Do with It? “Geyh (associate dean for research and John F. Kimberling professor of law, Indiana Univ. School of Law) is well qualified to edit this reader about the interaction of law and politics in contemporary society. The contributors . . . are among the very best scholars in the legal and political science realm . . . . The writing is lively and easy to follow for the somewhat sophisticated reader . . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice “Readers will find these essays fascinating, thoughtful and sometimes infuriating, as conventional disciplinary wisdom is defended, modified and refuted. The result is a terrific text for all students of the legal process.” —Mark A. Graber, University of Maryland “This volume pulls together an excellent cast to examine one of the most intriguing and most difficult questions in the study of law and politics today—what role does law play in the job of judging? There is a lot to learn in these pages, and this book does a fine job of pushing the conversation forward.” —Keith Whittington, Princeton University
Download or read book The Language of the Law written by David Mellinkoff and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2004-05-13 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells what the language of the law is, how it got that way and how it works out in the practice. The emphasis is more historical than philosophical, more practical than pedantic.
Download or read book Laughing at the Gods written by Allan C. Hutchinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-20 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book showcases eight judges that exemplify judicial greatness and looks at what role they play in law and society.
Download or read book Judging Judges written by Jason E. Whitehead and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "rule of law" stands at the heart of the American legal system. But the rule of law does not require judges slavishly to follow the letter of the law, unaffected by political or social influences. Because following the rule of law absolutely is impossible, it is dismissed by the public as a myth and judges are vilified. Judging Judges refocuses and elevates the debate over judges and the rule of law by showing that personal and professional values matter. Jason E. Whitehead demonstrates that the rule of law depends on a socially constructed attitude of legal obligation that spawns objective rules. Intensive interviews of judges reveal the value systems that uphold or undermine the attitude of legal obligation so central to the rule of law. This focus on the social practices undergirding these value systems demonstrates that the rule of law is ultimately a matter of social trust rather than textual constraints. Whitehead's unique combination of philosophical and empirical investigation is a major advance because it moves beyond the dichotomy of law or politics and shows that the rule of law is a shared social enterprise involving all of society--judges, politicians, scholars, and ordinary citizens alike. Judging Judges' attention to judicial values establishes judges' true worth in a liberal democracy.
Download or read book Language in the Legal Process written by J. Cotterill and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-10-09 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguists and lawyers from a range of countries and legal systems explore the language of the law and its participants, beginning with the role of the forensic linguist in legal proceedings, either as expert witness or in legal language reform. Subsequent chapters analyze different aspects of language and interaction in the chain of events from a police emergency call through the police interview context and into the courtroom, as well as appeal court and alternative routes to justice. A broad-based, coherent introduction to the discourse of language and law.
