Law, Language and the Courtroom - Legal Linguistics and the Discourse of Judges

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.

List of contents

List of contributors
Foreword
Editors' Introduction

PART I. CONSTRUCTING JUDICIAL DISCOURSE AND JUDICIAL IDENTITIES

1. The judicial English Eurolect: a genre profiling of CJEU judgments

2. Evidentiality in US Supreme Court opinions: focus on passive structures with say and tell

3. Standardisation in the judicial discourse: the case of the evolution of the French Arrêts de la Cour de Cassation and the use of forms in European procedural law

4. The consensus case law of the European Court of Human Rights in light of the Court's legitimacy over time: a corpus-linguistic perspective

5. Spider Woman beats Hulk: Baroness Hale and the prorogation of Parliament

PART II. JUDICIAL ARGUMENTATION AND EVALUATIVE LANGUAGE

6. Making a corpus-linguistic U-turn in multilingual adjudication

7. Evaluative language and strategic manoeuvring in the justification of judicial decisions: the case of teleological-evaluative argumentation

8. "Without proof of negligence or a causative connection": on causal argumentation in the discourse of the Supreme Court of Ireland's judgments on data protection

9. A corpus-based comparative analysis of the evaluative lexicon found in judicial decisions on immigration

PART III. JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION

10. Pedagogies of context: language ideology and expression rights at the European Court of Human Rights

11. Free speech, artistic expression and blasphemy laws within the ECHR margin of appreciation

12. The US Supreme Court's language of racism

13. Do the words of the American Constitution still matter? The question of "the meaning of meaning" in current judicial argumentation

14. How interdisciplinarity could improve the scientific value of legal studies of international judicial decisions

PART IV. CLARITY IN JUDICIAL DISCOURSE

15. Conveying the right message: principles and problems of multilingual communication at the European Court of Human Rights

16. Concision and Clarity in Italian Court Proceedings
Index

Summary

This book explores the language of judges. 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.

Report

`The editors are to be commended for compiling a volume which shows that language in judicial settings can be analysed from a multiplicity of perspectives, covering a variety of both common law and civil law countries and institutions. Several of the contributions are corpus-based, while others investigate thematic areas offering critical considerations on particular topics. Seen as a whole, the volume offers a series of fascinating glimpses into the world of judicial discourse. Readers may be pleasantly surprised to discover that the language of judges is evolving and adapting to the needs of modern society, perhaps more profoundly than is commonly thought!'

Christopher Williams, University of Foggia, Italy
`What do judges do when they judge? They have to separate reality from fiction; they have to know, to understand and "apply" a hyper complex system of regulations and they have to deal with expectations of legal colleagues (dogmatists), politicians and the public with particular understandings of law and justice. But above all: they "do" all this in and through language: interrogating process participants, interpreting and combining legal texts, delivering the judgment and defending it argumentatively against (potential) objections by lawyers and observing laymen - they create and reproduce "the" law as text and discourse. The book edited by Stanislaw Gozdz-Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo offers both a substantial overview of the recent interdisciplinary research and great new insights into the interdependencies of language practices, structures and patterns inside and outside the courtroom.'

Friedemann Vogel, University of Siegen, Germany

`Focussing principally but not exclusively on international courts, Law, Language and the Courtroom: Legal Linguistics and the Discourse of Judges looks at writing in the genres that present and publish the outcomes of the courts' work. Readers will find a sophisticated guide to international courts' discourse practices and their distinct judicial voices, including expression of the court's own role in negotiating sceptical tolerance and fixed conviction. The judicial presence can show up in evaluative terms advancing a decision or, equally, in styles suggesting objectivity. Chapters in this volume, in addition, invite further research and inquiry into the relations between standardisation and clarity where diversity is a main - if not defining - condition.'

Janet Giltrow, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

`In this volume, Gozdz-Roszkowski and Pontrandolfo bring together a rich body of scholarship exploring the courtroom as a space for the development and shifting of legal norms. The essays in Law, Language and the Courtroom: Legal Linguistics and the Discourse of Judges explore the dynamic aspect of law through the performance of law in that space. From the particular challenge of the European courts, which have to adjudicate in a space between the transnational and national, to explorations of 'judicial behaviour' as a way to circumvent conflicts in interpretation of the US Constitution, the chapters in this volume put forward new theories and methodologies for understanding the relationship between language and law (making). This book presents a significant contribution to the field of law and language.'

Karen McAuliffe, University of Birmingham

`Law, Language and the Courtroom. Legal Linguistics and the Discourse of Judges, edited by Stanislaw Gozdz-Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo, is an inspiring book with many great lessons in legal linguistics. The volume provides useful linguistic insights into how legal argumentation is constructed, interpreted and perceived. It is a must for lawyers and linguists specialising in judicial argumentation and reasoning.'

Victoria Guillén Nieto, University of Alicante, Spain
"This volume, Law, Language and the Courtroom: Legal Linguistics and the Discourse of Judges, addresses how judges and courts use language as a tool in the judicial decision-making process. It showcases some state-of-the-art developments in judicial discourse and provides an in-depth understanding of how the law is performed and interpreted by judges in the courtroom from a legal linguistic perspective."

-Shuqiong Wu, Jinyan Li, Int J Semiot Law

Product details

• Authors: Stanislaw Pontrandolfo Gozdz Roszkowski
• Assisted by: Stanislaw Gozdz Roszkowski (Editor), Gianluca Pontrandolfo (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.05.2023
• EAN: 9780367721886
• ISBN: 978-0-367-72188-6
• No. of pages: 246
• Series: Law, Language and Communication
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Other languages / Other literatures; LAW / Jurisprudence, Jurisprudence & general issues, Jurisprudence and general issues