Exploring the critical relationship between conversion and communication in legal thinking, this book delves into the interplay of language with legal texts, judgments, and concepts. It emphasizes that jurists must navigate shifting social behaviors and political landscapes, reflecting the dynamic nature of law in contemporary culture. The work addresses the complexities of wisdom versus automatism, individual privacy versus social norms, and philosophical reflections on the ongoing transformations within the legal field in the 21st century.
The book emphasizes the dynamic nature of knowledge, illustrating how it connects individuals to reality through a process shaped by conversion. It introduces the concept of 'the New Plural,' a worldview that integrates Analog, Digital, AI, and Quantum perspectives, highlighting the interplay of these elements in shaping cognition and understanding.
This book offers educational experiences, including reflections and the resulting essays, from the Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics held during 2008 – 2011 at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law. The texts address educational aspects of law that require attention and that also are issues in traditional jurisprudence and legal theory. The book introduces education in legal semiotics as it evolves in a legal curriculum. Specific semiotic concepts, such as “sign”, “symbol” or “legal language,” demonstrate how a lawyer’s professionally important tasks of name-giving and meaning-giving are seldom completely understood by lawyers or laypeople. These concepts require analyses of considerable depth to understand the expressiveness of these legal names and meanings, and to understand how lawyers can “say the law,” or urge such a saying correctly and effectively in the context of a natural language that is understandable to all of us. The book brings together the structure of the Seminar, its foundational philosophical problems, the specifics of legal history, and the semiotics of the legal system with specific themes such as gender, family law, and business law.
This book present a structure for understanding and exploring the semiotic character of law and law systems. Cultivating a deep understanding for the ways in which lawyers make meaning―the way in which they help make the world and are made, in turn by the world they create ―can provide a basis for consciously engaging in the work of the law and in the production of meaning. The book first introduces the reader to the idea of semiotics in general and legal semiotics in particular, as well as to the major actors and shapers of the field, and to the heart of the signs. The second part studies the development of the strains of thinking that together now define semiotics, with attention being paid to the pragmatics, psychology and language of legal semiotics. A third part examines the link between legal theory and semiotics, the practice of law, the critical legal studies movement in the USA, the semiotics of politics and structuralism. The last part of the book ties the different strands of legal semiotics together, and closely looks at semiotics in the lawyer’s toolkit―such text, name and meaning.
This engaging book examines the origins and first effects of the concept ‘legal semiotics’, focusing on the inventor of the term, Roberta Kevelson (1931-1998). It highlights the importance of her ideas and works which have contributed to legal theory, legal interpretation and philosophy of language. Kevelson’s work is particularly relevant today, in our world of global electronic communication networks which rely so much on language, signs, signals and shortcuts. Kevelson could not have foreseen the 21st century, yet the story of her work and influence deserves more attention as it is key to our understanding of modern legal discourse and why law fascinates and is accepted in modern society. The authors draw on Kevelson’s hitherto unknown Office Papers and Notes, and a biographical examination points to key influences in her work such as the early feminist movements of the US East Coast, the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and the semiotics of Thomas Sebeok. This forms the basis for a more encompassing research of Kevelson’s position, work and philosophical background, which the authors call for. A quick and enlightening read, this book interests a wide range of readers with an interest in legal history and the fields which Kevelson both drew on and influenced, including lawyers, students and scholars.
This book explores meaning and our understanding of reality within legal and philosophical frameworks. It posits that meaning arises from linguistic expression and its philosophical implications. Part I delves into the works of Klages, Derrida, Von Hofmannsthal, and Wittgenstein, highlighting silence as a source of meaning. The discussion on 20th-century psychologism emphasizes the significance of the word as the fundamental unit of language, reflecting our perception of reality as composed of particles, forming a comprehensive "particle story." Each chapter addresses aspects of legal semiotics, such as the implications of a Judge’s declarations, law students' training in different attitudes, and the relationship between law and language.
Part II further examines reality through the lens of particles and partitioning, presenting texts that support the notion that particle thinking is central to our understanding of meaning. It connects concepts from physics, quantum theory, holism, and modern brain research, underscoring their relevance to linguistic capabilities. Ultimately, the book argues that partitions and particles are not definitive truths in the cosmos or knowledge systems; instead, meaning is a dynamic process—a constellation shaped by ever-evolving attitudes that inform our narratives about the cosmos and creation. It proposes a fresh perspective on meaning as a linguistic phenomenon rooted in human narrativity.
W ohl selten ist das Bild iiber das Werk eines zeitgenossischen Philosophen so1chen Wandlungen ausgesetzt gewesen, wie dies bei Edmund Hussed der Fall ist. Mit der zunehmenden FiiUe der Hussediana werden neue Aspekte den traditionellen Gesichts punkten hinzugefiigt. Keiner vermag genau zu sagen wie das Ganze einmal aussehen wird. Diese Tatsache steht aber der Moglichkeit einer Interpretation nicht im Wege. Vielmehr bereichert sie jede Auseinandersetzung mit einem gliicklichen Zug des Vorlaufigen; jede Diskussion wird ein fruchtbares Wagnis. Das entspricht ganz und gar der Lebenshaltung des Urhebers der transzendentalen Phanomeno logie. Noch gegen Ende seines Lebens stand Edmund Hussed unter dem iiberwaltigenden Eindruck der vielen und vielver sprechenden moglichen neuen Anfange in der Phanomenologie. Hoffentlich nimmt der Abschluss der sich jetzt im Gang befin dcnden editorischen Arbeiten, der einmal kommen muss, diese grundsatzliche Offenheit nicht von uns. Vielleicht sind wir in einer gliicklichen Lage: wir, die wir jetzt schon durch den rein ausserlichen Zustand von Husserls eigenem Schrifttum immer wieder an dieses Wesentliche seines Denkens erinnert werden. Transzendental-phanomenologisch Denken heisst neu Anfangen lernen und verstehen, was es bedeutet, auf dem Wege zu sein. Dies diirfte der Nachweis ihres wahren philosophischen Gehaltes sem.
