1st Edition

Law and Language

Edited By Thomas Morawetz Copyright 2000
    408 Pages
    by Routledge

    The essays in this volume reflect several important and widely-discussed issues in legal theory. One set of issues may be characterized as legal hermeneutics, a consideration of the practices governing the retrieval and determination of meaning from legal texts and in legal contexts. Related issues arise from the use of literature and literary criticism to enhance an understanding of law and from the study of legal rhetoric.

    Contents: Law as Expression: Thinking about our language, James Boyd White; Babel: a she'ur, Richard Hyland; Law as rhetoric, rhetoric as law: The arts of cultural and communal life, James Boyd White. Law and Literature: Finding Meaning: Linguistic indeterminacy, Timothy A.O. Endicott; Law as literature, Sanford Levinson; The hermeneutics file, Thomas C. Grey; Interpreting the law: hermeneutical and poststructuralist perspectives, David Couzens Hoy; Transcendental deconstruction, transcendent justice, J.M. Balkin; The annual John Randolph Tucker Lecture - force, Stanley E. Fish. The Law of Language: Morals and the constitution: the sin of obscenity, Louis Henkin; Pornography as defamation and discrimination, Catharine A. MacKinnon; Pornography and the 1st Amendment: a reply to Professor MacKinnon, Thomas I. Emerson; Cultural heterogeneity and law: pornography, blasphemy and the 1st Amendment, Robert C. Post; Name index.

    Biography

    Thomas Morawetz