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Narratives as the Cultural Context of Law

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Abstract

Law can be characterised as a highly specialized tool with strong social impact requiring social legitimization and acceptance. Law is also specific, abstract world. World that needs words to exist. To understand law and to share its content it is important to focus on narratives related to it. The article deals with the importance of narration in law as the consequence of discursive peculiarity of law and its dependence on the acceptance of societies. Law is culturally conditioned, and by means of narrative can combine the expectations of society concerning legitimation with legal rationality. The law cannot function exclusively as an abstract and formal structure nor an administrative apparatus, with own ways of legitimization or justification. Through social acceptance law gains its real form, but at the same time it is subordinated to cultural patterns. Changes in narratives change the law and then the real world. The article shows possible ways of analysis of narratives, narrative strategies and forms that are present in law.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, Veveří 70, 611 80, Brno, Czech Republic

    Martin Škop

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  1. Martin Škop
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Correspondence to Martin Škop.

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This article is a result of the research funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), Grant No. GA19-12837S—“Law in Literature: Qualitative Analysis of the Image of Law in Belles-Lettres at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century”.

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Škop, M. Narratives as the Cultural Context of Law. Int J Semiot Law 33, 101–111 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-019-09665-w

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