Awareness of boundary, both physical and mental, is seen as the beginning of perception. In any account of the world, therefore, boundary must be a ubiquitous component. In sharp contrast, accounts of God within the Christian tradition commonly have proceeded by the affirmation that God is above and beyond boundary as infinite, timeless, and simple. To overcome this “problem of transcendence,” of how such a God can relate to such a world, an eight-term grammar of boundary is developed to demonstrate (...) how God as Trinity can properly be held to be without boundary yet constitute the ground of a bounded world. This leads to a way of granting theological significance to the origin and development of life. Life is seen to exist in dynamic, intentional relationships between context (“outside”) and intext (“inside”) across permeable boundaries through which an exchange of resources and information takes place for the sake of self-continuation. Comprehending life's distinctive utilization of boundary in terms of the grammar developed here enables life to be seen not only as a vestige of the Trinity but also, precisely because of this, as a sign and parable of redemption. (shrink)

The postmodernist view, with its emphasis on the nature of discursive practices in constructing subjectivity and reality, has found many applications. This book develops a critically informed psychoanalytic semiotic view derived from Lacan, and applies it to the study of law. It also integrates some of the central concepts of chaos theory in describing how the legal text is constructed and how it may be read. Postmodern feminist analyses focusing on a possible ecriture feminine provide key insights, and the notion (...) of an empowered democracy is offered as a potentially generating milieu for a revolutionary replacement discourse. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Being built on the ground of mutual effect, facing the current state-isolation, international law is losing its grip on efficiency. This makes some of us to question (1) If law is not working, do we still need law? If we would say no, the history shows that such is the path to the state-suicide. As Smithian mutual benefits is the assurance of the individual benefits, we need international relationships to create the benefits for the individual states, hence international law, Yet (...) the current one is certainly not working, then, the question, (2) What should the international law be? The enforcement of the international law could be accomplished through the blockchain. As blockchain “went bypass” the national law, and simply negated it, yet it is still not immune to the scope of international jurisdiction. We also argue that the blockchain’ smart contract is not sufficient enough to operate smoothly. Human brain is structured as the mirror rather than a glass and transferring the law interpretation to the machine would not work, hence, we designed the formula of langue and parole, blockchain multiseg operating under the semiotics of the international law. Here the language learning is modelled with the supervisory and reinforcing algorithms, with supervisory predetermined with bias X,Y towards the values of law. Sort of form of constant repetends of Heidegger’s hermeneutics circle. The most important part in this paper is written with the purpose to explain that international law is at the same struggle that Kafka had. Carrying the weight of both, the clothed façade and true self, first being the morality guide and later the states will, and not being neither, international law is self-isolated from the real world, as Gregor Samsa was. Hence, this is not the paper of secularization, no customs, no higher purpose, nothing except the will of states, that can be constantly renewed with the signifier and signified being linked and re-linked. (shrink)

This text aims at pointing out some of the philosophy of law present in the works of the Hellenist philosopher and physician Sextus Empiricus (ΣΕΞΤΟϒ ΕΜΠΕΙΡΙΚΟϒ), and supports two main theses: the first, based on an epistemological point of view, presupposes that exact knowledge of the world — that is, an entirely adequate relationship between the mind of each human being and the events around — is not possible, which insurmountably renders all perception relative. The second thesis, from an axiological (...) point of view, postulates that Skepticism does not necessarily imply disregarding concepts of justice or abandoning any ethical parameters, but functions as an immunizing element against intolerance and dogmatism. (shrink)

The paper explores the role and meaning of maṣlaḥa and its possible appropriation in the field of Islamic legal and economic thought, as laid down by various medieval and contemporary Muslim scholars. Questions that are pertinent to the research are the following: how has maṣlaḥa been incorporated in legal reasoning and what kind of meaning does it convey; what type of economic reading does it presuppose; do ethics, law, and scriptural sources play equally important role as reference in developing the (...) concept in economic terms, are some of the questions that this paper will try to provide answer to. Further, as there is a tendency to believe that Islamic economic thought cannot be equated only with legal and juridical underpinnings, it is pertinent to pose a question if economic ideas have flourished independently from its legal framework. Maṣlaḥa in its capacity has always remained part and parcel of Islamic legal theory, and has been rarely addressed within the frame of economic thought; therefore a new reading is required to deal with the position of economic teachings within Islamic tradition. The paper consists of three sections, whereby the contributions made by Muslim medieval scholars on Islamic economics will be presented. The first chapter provides a historical overview of Islamic law and the concept of maṣlaḥa in relation to the field of Islamic economics, including Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s monumental Iḥya ‘ulūm al dīn, which presents a milestone in converging Sufi ethical teachings of Islam in accordance with the legal methodology of Islamic law. The second part aims to discern and examine the economic jurisprudence and economic theory in Islam as it is understood by some of the mainstream theoreticians of Islamic studies, advocating the view that Islamic economics is inextricably related to the gist of Islamic legal reasoning. In this section the ideas of Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr will be presented as he proposes a new reading of Islamic economics as a doctrine and not a science. The third part questions Islamic legal establishment and its normativity, the claim that legal norms have always been part of the Islamic economic reasoning. This claim rests upon the idea that Islamic legal patterns were also socially constructed, including some aspects of Islamic economic reasoning. Concluding remarks will draw upon the idea that despite the fact that Islamic legal and economic literature are based upon the religious scriptures of Islam, the Qur’an and Tradition, it is more appropriate to claim that they rest upon the ethical cosmology that surpasses purely theological concerns. (shrink)

The European Union is one of the ‘big ideas’ of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and has been built on the idea of the European Community, which it supersedes. Seen in this light the emergent law of the European Union is becoming omnipresent in so many ways and yet it does not appear to have been the subject of as much semiotic study as it deserves. This paper takes a multilingual stance and explores emerging EC and EU law from a (...) perspective of a lawyer-linguist practitioner in the field. The purpose is to describe a range of practitioner ‘realities’ and to explore how semiotics provides a tool for analysis and insights for a better understanding and awareness of EU law, with particular emphasis on the legislative, or law-making aspects. (shrink)

This paper presents a specific concept of the legal system, bringing a contribution to the Theory of Law, from the line of analysis of the Semiotics of Law. The entire methodological approach of this concept is based on the contributions of the École de Paris, from a theoretical-semiotic perspective derived from the studies of Algirdas Julien Greimas. The analysis seeks to further and qualify previous studies and publications, and focuses on the task of presenting the concept of juridicity, deriving (...) the description of the concept of the legal system from it, understood as a set of connections between legal texts. Consequently, the paper presents a Mesh Model for the description of the legal system, replacing the positivist concept of the Pyramid Model, through restoring the relationship between Law and Moral, between Law and Society and Law and Justice. Throughout the theoretical explanation, the paper tries to trace, develop and qualify the main points with arguments that distinguish the operation of the legal system, such as the concentric movement, micro-universes of meaning, discursive practices, the task of legal actors, dynamic inter-textuality, the role of interpretation, the process of the production of legal meaning and the search for textual justice. (shrink)

Does the law act for or against «the people»? Who are «the people»? This collection of essays by philosophers, historians, legal scholars, and others examines these questions in historical perspective; in law and literature; in contemporary, advanced, and developing societies; and with respect to gender and economics. What «the law» does and ought to represent is viewed semiotically as a problem admitting of no definitive answer.

However, it became apparent shortly after the establishing of the Center that not only were all methods of legal semiotics not Peircean in origin, but were in their respective foundational assumptions not likely to be compatible with Peirce's semiotics without some radical, transforming development of the idea, 'legal semiotics'. It was clear that if one would intend to be faithful to Peircean semiotics then holding a fixed notion of what an idea of Peircean semiotics of (...) law means would be a violation of the spirit of Peirce's thought; this above all emphasizes the growth and development of initiative ideas and also the stricture that all leading principles must be subject to revision. Even the idea of Peircean semiotics, as leading principle, must itself be an open idea, the meaning of which must be transformable through the process of defining it. A metasemiotics view of a semiotics of law must leave open the possibility for revision of the leading principle of the term, "legal semiotics. " Therefore, if legal semiotics is an idea which accumulates and evolves its meaning in the very process of self-examination, then a process of investigating law investigates itself as well in any semiotic process of inquiry. It became apparent that the most appropriate contribution the Center could make to the area of a Peirce an semiotics would be to act as a sponsor, an inclusive rather than exclusive agent for inquiry of all kinds into the general topic of law and semiotics. (shrink)

The paper explores the role and meaning of maṣlaḥa and its possible appropriation in the field of Islamic legal and economic thought, as laid down by various medieval and contemporary Muslim scholars. Questions that are pertinent to the research are the following: how has maṣlaḥa been incorporated in legal reasoning and what kind of meaning does it convey; what type of economic reading does it presuppose; do ethics, law, and scriptural sources play equally important role as reference in developing the (...) concept in economic terms, are some of the questions that this paper will try to provide answer to. Further, as there is a tendency to believe that Islamic economic thought cannot be equated only with legal and juridical underpinnings, it is pertinent to pose a question if economic ideas have flourished independently from its legal framework. Maṣlaḥa in its capacity has always remained part and parcel of Islamic legal theory, and has been rarely addressed within the frame of economic thought; therefore a new reading is required to deal with the position of economic teachings within Islamic tradition. The paper consists of three sections, whereby the contributions made by Muslim medieval scholars on Islamic economics will be presented. The first chapter provides a historical overview of Islamic law and the concept of maṣlaḥa in relation to the field of Islamic economics, including Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s monumental Iḥya ‘ulūm al dīn, which presents a milestone in converging Sufi ethical teachings of Islam in accordance with the legal methodology of Islamic law. The second part aims to discern and examine the economic jurisprudence and economic theory in Islam as it is understood by some of the mainstream theoreticians of Islamic studies, advocating the view that Islamic economics is inextricably related to the gist of Islamic legal reasoning. In this section the ideas of Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr will be presented as he proposes a new reading of Islamic economics as a doctrine and not a science. The third part questions Islamic legal establishment and its normativity, the claim that legal norms have always been part of the Islamic economic reasoning. This claim rests upon the idea that Islamic legal patterns were also socially constructed, including some aspects of Islamic economic reasoning. Concluding remarks will draw upon the idea that despite the fact that Islamic legal and economic literature are based upon the religious scriptures of Islam, the Qur’an and Tradition, it is more appropriate to claim that they rest upon the ethical cosmology that surpasses purely theological concerns. (shrink)

Copyright law is often premised on the identification of an author of a literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work, and then giving this author exclusive rights for a limited period to control the commercial exploitation of his or her intellectual creation. However, the hegemonic modernist position of the romantic authorial text has been challenged by numerous scholars who have argued that the meaning of a text lies not in its origin but in its destination. Roland Barthes’ work, controversial at the (...) time of publication with its assault on modernity and the primacy of authorial control, has nonetheless laid the groundwork for an important body of scholarship on interpretive communities. Whether one adopts the position of neoconservative postmodernism or poststructural postmodernism, this article argues that a semiotic analysis of works of copyright as “signs”, “myths” and “polysemous texts” will nonetheless offer an important framework to understand the full reach of the transformative use doctrine in the United States today. (shrink)

The crux of the present paper is that Fiqh can be considered as a religious apparatus mediating between the spheres of divine addressivity and Sharia performativity. The former may manifest itself as the addressing of a spectral prophetic figure or the hidden Imām; however, the latter may emerge in the form of a responsive-performative discourse characterized paradoxically by the autonomy of ontology, heteronomy of force and pen-ultimacy of statements. By fabricating a sacred archive, establishing some hermeneutical devices (generative and interpretative), (...) and designating authentic archons, Fiqh as a mediating factor determines the ultimate form of the performative discourse of Sharia and renders the spectral addressing into a sonorous imperative tone. With regard to their various semiotic procedures, different Fiqh apparatuses, in Islamic worlds, lead to divergent and sometimes discordant binding discourses ranging from sovereign and generative Sharia laws to suspended divine rules. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 63-88.

On 24th March 2020, the first nationwide complete lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister of India for 21 days which was later extended to 31st May 2020. Consequently, thousands of migrant workers placed in big cities had no other option but to go back to their native villages. Their journeys back to villages- thousands of kilometres on bicycles or foot due to the non-availability of public transport amidst the travel ban- were driven by the compulsions of food and shelter. (...) In one of many heart-wrenching incidents, sixteen laborers were run over by a freight train while they were resting on the railway tracks. The images of the Roti on the railway track strewn across were beamed on the national news channels, as a telling commentary of the unimaginable hardships of these workers. Ironically, in the eyes of law, they were trespassers under the Indian Railways Act, 1989. The Indian Railway did not pay any compensation to the victims. Their act also violated the Indian Disaster Management Act, 2005 and Indian Penal Code, 1860- the law for the breach of lockdown guidelines and the law for disobedience of order by public servants respectively- for having decided to travel amidst a travel ban. The semiotics of law-making acts ‘criminal’ bereft of ‘moral culpability’ are seldom questioned on their supposed amoral foundations. Pandemic exhibited that social fissures not only condition the individual or community actions but also the actions of the State. Minorities especially Muslims were at the receiving end of State’s selective enforcement of lockdown laws in India. The various instances in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic expose the hollow claims of equality before the law and the equal protection of laws as a constitutional promise to every citizen. This article aims to unravel the ostensible and the actual moral exhibition of such Indian laws through the lens of several incidents during the nationwide lockdown in India. This paper would argue that this constructed positivist amorality needs to be deconstructed to unearth the power imbalance that it seeks to hide. (shrink)

This volume provides a critical roadmap through the major historical sources of legal semiotics as we know them today. The history of legal semiotics, now at least a century old, has never been written (a non-event itself pregnant with semiotic possibility). As a consequence, its sources are seldom clearly exposed and, as word, object and meaning change, are sometimes lost. They reach from an English translation of the 1916 inaugural lecture of the first Chair in Legal Significs at (...) the Amsterdam University, via mid 20th century studies on "property" or "contract," to equally fascinating essays on contemporary semiotic problems produced by former students of the Roberta Kevelson Semiotics Roundtable Seminar at Penn State University 2012 and 2013. Together, the materials in this book weave the fabric of semiotics and significs, two names for the unfolding of semiotics in law and legal discourse at least until the second half of the 20th century, and both of which covered a lawyer's focus on sign and meaning in law. The latter is embedded within the cultural imperatives of the civilization that gave these terms meaning and made them an effective tool for the dissection of law, its reconstitution as an instrument to be used by the lawyer to advance the interests of her clients, and for judges as a means to restructure language as a narrative of law whose power could bend behavior to its strictures. Legal semiotics has become an indispensible part of the elite lawyer's toolkit and a fundamental approach to analysis of legal texts. Two previous volumes published in 2011 and 2012 explored the conceptual, methodological and epistemological progress in the field of legal semiotics, the modern forms of semiotics study, and the mechanics of meaning making processes by lawyers. Yet the great lessons of semiotics requires a focus on the origins of the concepts and frameworks that would become contemporary legal semiotics, its origins as an object of the consciousness of meaning making-one whose roots, as lessons for the oracular conversations of law, are expanded in this volume. (shrink)

Religion can bring about social harmony as well as social conflict. Religious law is a key element in both cases. Scholars can explain how religious law changes according to historical and socio-cultural context. They can also help reengineering prescriptions that cause social conflict. Changes in religious law can be explained according to a chronological rhetoric (certain agents cause certain changes) or according to a logical rhetoric (a change acquires its meaning in opposition to other possible changes). The two approaches are (...) complementary, but the semiotics of religious law predominantly adopts the second one. In both cases, the explanation of how a religious law changes and the reengineering of a religious prescription are related activities. The semiotics of religious law is particularly equipped to propose alternatives for conflicting prescriptions. However, there is a difference between showing that some alternatives exist and advocating which alternatives should be taken. Whilst the latter position is similar to that of semiotic guerrilla warfare, the former rather configures the semiotics of religious law as a therapy. Semiotic guerrilla warfare stresses the need to demystify the discourse of power that subjugates individuals or groups to a certain religious law. Semiotic therapy does not focus on demystification but on reconciliation. The task of the semiotic therapy of religious law is to show that situations of social conflict generated by certain prescriptions can be decreased or eliminated by adopting alternative paths of meaning. The semiotic therapist of religious law can be effective in showing these alternatives only if some pragmatic and semantic preconditions are met: a correct involvement with the sets of religious core values at stake and an articulated analysis of the paths of meaning to which these values give rise. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 383-397.

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Semiotics provides the tools for studying the process of decoding law, one of the most important tasks in the daily work of courts. The semiotic review of juridical interpretation and gap filling concludes that in juridical and semiotic methodology the same question—how a norm is interpreted—is answered from different perspectives. According to the semiotic model proposed in the current paper, juridical interpretation can be structured into three levels: intra-, inter- and supranormative sign-process. For legal theory semiotics can highlight (...) the similarities in the interpretation of norms and gaps. In gap filling the iconic, indexical and symbolic relations compensate for the missing of intranormative semiosis. The applicability of the proposed model is tested on an example of case law. Semiotic investigation of the judgements of Supreme Court of Estonia and European Court of Human Rights shows that semiotics gives a well structured picture of the juridical interpretation process. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 204 Seiten: 391-417.

The jurisprudent Jack M. Balkin introduced the analogy of memes as a semiotic device for understanding the law. His notion of cultural software into which this device was inserted is developed first, followed by a development of memetic analysis and its several semiotic dimensions. After a brief treatment of the position of ideology in view of memetic analysis, and the corresponding notion of transcendence, Balkin’s explicitly semiotic setting for this doctrine is displayed. This method is then briefly applied to the (...) civilian doctrine of patrimony, to supplement Balkin’s application of it to common law institutions. (shrink)

This book explores from selected semioticians' international and cross-cultural viewpoints, the changing concepts of custom and community. The idea of the 'primitive' as a complex social system is explored in the context of recent studies of comparative law. The range of focus is from Lockean majority-rule to aboriginal self-determination, and includes a new look at waning ideologies such as the -old- feminism, Critical Legal Studies, and postmodernisms. Pragmatism is reinterpreted and reviewed with fresh eyes.".

Peirce's Law of Triviality: The Implementation of the Trivium of Logic, Rhetoric and Grammar. Basic Categories for Linguistics and Literature Studies from a Universal Semiotic Theory This article focuses on the aspects that refer to linguistics in the works of Charles S. Peirce. His pragmatic philosophy implemented many other sciences and among them is the traditional trivium of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, which Peirce divided into different kinds of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. While the impact of the work of Peirce (...) on theses sciences is weak, the integration of the sciences in his philosophy is interesting as a step in the history of science and his work is an example for ecclecticism and historism of science in the 19th century and the universalism of science deducted from a philosophy that uses the sign as an unitarian principle. Triple constructions are a very common feature in the writings of Peirce, and the trivium is an example of an academic construction Peirce implemented. (shrink)

This article takes a Deleuzian view toward diversity, law and justice. It makes use of the insights developed in his two books on cinema comparing an “organic regime” to a “crystalline regime.” The former will be seen as the image of thought and regime of signs of traditional criminal justice practices (due process model, crime control model, family model, actuarial justice, restorative justice); the latter, the basis of a transformative justice (social justice) and the regime of signs that are its (...) constitutive elements. Deleuze’s views on semiotics can be fruitfully contrasted with Lacan’s. I want to indicate how Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic semiotics, on the descriptive level, quite accurately describes the connection of desire based on lack with capital logic, whereas, Deleuze provides an alternative ontology (desire based on production) and develops suggestions for privileging a becoming rather than a being. His is a call for ongoing transformations. I want to indicate how diversity, transformation and tolerance can have better developments in a Deleuzian model of the crystalline regime. This entails alternative discursive subject positions and regimes of signs within which constructions of reality by diverse peoples find wider expression. Accordingly, this is about better approximations to social justice. (shrink)

Lawyers write, blog and are otherwise producers of words; they structure public life through legal discourse and integrate all issues that reinforce legal reasoning. Even if one is inclined not to justify the power of their words in the context of a democratic theory, one is hardly able to challenge its public acceptance. But semiotic analyses harden the question whether these emperors wear nothing but robes. That attitude intensifies where medicine becomes increasingly relevant for legal discourse, as becomes clear where (...) for instance US political viewpoints bring bioethical issues to the Courts. One major theme in today’s medicine pertains to identity in its psychological, philosophical and social dimensions. Identity thus becomes a groundbreaking semiotic issue in law and medicine; both discourses are particular important to the otherness of the other. A US criminal law case interests here (Harrington v. State of Iowa, 2003; cited as: 659N.W.2d 509). The case is decided with “information about what the person has stored in his brain”. A chain of signs is involved: from “brain-function” to “brain-storage” via “brain-scan” to “brain-fingerprint”, for which the case became famous. A long series of signs and meanings belong here to intertwined discourses. Central is a particular sign in each discourse: “brain” means brain scan, and “fingerprint” means law! The two display trading mechanisms, which determine the otherness of the other and the self! The chain of signs in the Harrington case shows inter-disciplinarity in law and inter-discursivity among law and medicine. The trading itself underlines the semiotic dimensions in cyberspace, in particular the semiotics of the virtual (Hayles, Kurzweil) and their effects on legal discourse. (shrink)

Later reprinted by Deborah Charles Publications (and not available from Amazon), this book expounds and comments on the application of Greimasian semiotics to a legal text, as found in the article by Greimas and Landowski in Greimas, Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales (1976), compares this with the semiotic presuppositions of Hart, Dworkin, MacCormick and Kelsen, and offers my own analysis of the implications of such semiotic analysis for legal theory, including some more recent radical non-positivist accounts.

This book examines the concept of meaning and our general understanding of reality in a legal and philosophical context. Starting from the premise that meaning is a matter of linguistic and other forms of articulation, it considers the inherent philosophical consequences. Part I presents Klages', Derrida's, Von Hofmannsthal's and Wittgenstein's explorations of silence as a source of articulation and meaning. Debates about 20th century psychologism gave the attitude concept a pivotal role; it illustrates the importance of the discovery that a (...) word is globally qualified as 'the basic unit of language'. This is mirrored in the fact that we understand reality as a matter of particles and thus interpret the real as a component of an all-embracing 'particle story'. Each chapter of the book focuses on an aspect of legal semiotics related to the chapter's theme: for instance on the meaning of a Judge's 'Saying for Law', on law students training in varying attitudes or on the ties between law and language. Part II of the book illustrates our general understanding of reality as a matter of particles and partitioning, and examines texts that prove that particle thinking is basic for our meaning concept. It shows that physics, quantum theory, holism, and modern brain research focusing on human linguistic capabilities, confirm their ties to the particle story. In contrast, the book concludes that partitions and particles are neither a fact in the history of the cosmos nor a determinant of knowledge and the sciences, and that meaning is a process: a constellation rather than a fixation. This is manifest once one understands meaning as the result of continuously changing attitudes, which create our narratives on cosmos and creation. The book proposes a new key for meaning: a linguistic occurrence anchored in dimensions of human narrativity. (shrink)

After deconstructing the thermodynamic concepts of work and waste, I take up Howard Odum’s idea of energy quality, which tallies the overall amount of energy needed to be dissipated in order to accomplish some work of interest. This was developed from economic considerations that give obvious meaning to the work accomplished. But the energy quality idea can be used to import meaning more generally into Nature. It could be viewed as projecting meaning back from any marked work into preceding energy (...) gradient dissipations that immediately paved the way for it. But any work done by an abiotic dissipative structure, since it would be without positive economic significance, would also be difficult to mark as a starting point for the energy quality calculation. Furthermore, any destructive work as by hurricanes or floods, with negative economic significance, would not seem to merit the quality calculation either. But there has been abiotic work of keen interest to us—that which mediated the origin of life. Some kind of abiotic dissipative structures had to have been the framework that fostered this process, regardless of how it might come to be understood in detail. Since all dissipative structures have the same thermodynamic and informational organization in common, any of them might provide the material context for the origin of something. So we can pick any starting point we wish, and calculate backward what sequence of energy usages would have been necessary to set it up. Given such an open ended project, we could not find an obvious place in any sequence to stop and start the forward the calculation, and so we would need to take it right back to an ultimate beginning, like the insolation of some area, or the outpouring of Earth’s thermal energy. Any energy dissipation might be the beginning of something of importance, and so Nature is as replete with potential meanings as it is with energy gradients. (shrink)

After deconstructing the thermodynamic concepts of work and waste, I take up Howard Odum’s idea of energy quality, which tallies the overall amount of energy needed to be dissipated in order to accomplish some work of interest. This was developed from economic considerations that give obvious meaning to the work accomplished. But the energy quality idea can be used to import meaning more generally into Nature. It could be viewed as projecting meaning back from any marked work into preceding energy (...) gradient dissipations that immediately paved the way for it. But any work done by an abiotic dissipative structure, since it would be without positive economic significance, would also be difficult to mark as a starting point for the energy quality calculation. Furthermore, any destructive work as by hurricanes or floods, with negative economic significance, would not seem to merit the quality calculation either. But there has been abiotic work of keen interest to us—that which mediated the origin of life. Some kind of abiotic dissipative structures had to have been the framework that fostered this process, regardless of how it might come to be understood in detail. Since all dissipative structures have the same thermodynamic and informational organization in common, any of them might provide the material context for the origin of something. So we can pick any starting point we wish, and calculate backward what sequence of energy usages would have been necessary to set it up. Given such an open ended project, we could not find an obvious place in any sequence to stop and start the forward the calculation, and so we would need to take it right back to an ultimate beginning, like the insolation of some area, or the outpouring of Earth’s thermal energy. Any energy dissipation might be the beginning of something of importance, and so Nature is as replete with potential meanings as it is with energy gradients. (shrink)

This paper proposes a semiotic theory of norms—what I term normative semiotics. The paper’s central contention is that social norms are a language. Moreover, it is a language that we instinctively learn to speak. Normative behaviour is a mode of communication, the intelligibility of which allows us to establish cooperative relationships with others. Normative behaviour communicates an actor’s potential as a cooperative partner. Compliance with a norm is an act of communication: compliance signals cooperativeness; noncompliance signals uncooperativeness. An evolutionary (...) model is proposed to explain how this comes about: evolution has generated an instinctual proficiency in working with these signals much like a language—a proficiency that manifests in an emotional context. We see these social rules as possessing a certain ‘rightness’ in normative terms. This adaptive trait is what we call internalization. Internalization enhances the individual’s ability to speak this code. Because these signals communicate who is and who is not a reliable co-operator, sending and receiving cooperation signals is crucial to individual survival. Individuals who internalized the entire process and thus became more adept at speaking the language were at an advantage. Law seeks to shape the language of norms by maintaining the collective standards of society; as such, understanding how and why this normative language emerges is critical to understanding a core function of law. (shrink)

The Sixth International Round Table on Law and Semiotics, sponsored and organized by "The Center for Semiotic Research in Law, Government and Economics," convened April 29, 30, May 1, 2, 1992, at Penn State-Berks. Under the general topic, "Flux, Complexity, Illusion," special sessions on the following topics resulted in this wide-ranging collection of papers: Legal Semiotics Theory; Law and Literature; Law and Economics: Intertexts in Legal Semiotics; Codification, Custom and Legal Norms. These papers represent interdisciplinary inquiry that (...) explores the assumptions that a) law is a complex sign-system which dialogically interacts with other social organizations; b) law is an indeterminate and open-ended concept in both theory and practice that contributes to the process of creating and affirming social values; and c) all sign-systems are self-correcting and self-directing. (shrink)

The Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics is integrated in the regular program of a US Law School and student enrollment is honored with credit points. Hitherto, the study of Legal Semiotics has mainly been located outside the Law Schools in the US and the Faculties of Law in the EU. Two important questions within the more general theme of Legal Semiotics and Legal Education arose: (1) the program requirements in an education context, and (2) the (...) attention and interests of the students. This IJSL issue offers essays presented during the Round Table which closed the Seminar, provides some experience-based suggestions for a Seminar program and discusses how to deal with the pragmatic attitude of law students. It interests how those topics relate to legal and semiotic literature and how they focus globally important viewpoints, as can be concluded in the example of the legal semiotics of family structures. (shrink)

Developed from a one-day symposium at the University of Tilburg, this collection of papers explores the semiotic foundations of legislation as viewed from jurisprudential, institutional and sociological perspectives. They pose such questions as: the audience of legislation; the relations between legislative and judicial discourse; the contributions of speech act theory; the effectiveness of legislation and its meaning in non-legal discourse; and the creation of a supra-national form of constitutional discourse, that of Europe.

This paper focus on the problem posed by the rigidity of categories to the translation/transaction operation of the intercultural approach to law. This rigidity holds subjects back from leaving the more structured paradigms (moral, social, cultural, legal) of their culture. The first methodological issue this paper seeks to clarify is to place the problem of categories within a narrowly delimited research horizon in which this issue can be treated with an appropriate degree of scientific rigor. This need seems to find (...) a solution in a shift from the strictly legal plane to the linguistic plane. In linguistic terms, one could observe categories as the articulation of certain linguistic signs (signifier/signified) to a high degree of abstraction and fixity of meaning. The question, then, is whether and how it is possible to overcome the resistance of this elementary unit of language. This opens to the legal-theoretical problem a strictly linguistic (semiological and semiotic) line of inquiry. The research idea of this contribution is that the linguistic sign has spaces of resilience that remain unknown to the semiological view but visible to a semiotic view. A ‘bridge’ between the abstraction of the semiotic level and the concreteness of the legal level can be find in the most recent developments of cultural anthropology, which will be used here. Following this approach and these tools the aim of this paper is to show the potential of the sign observed from a semiotic perspective in drawing intersubjective and even interspecific semiotic lines useful to intercultural law. The method adopted here consists of an epistemological pluralism that holds together semiotics, anthropology and law, thus showing the fruitfulness of an openly interdisciplinary approach. (shrink)

The issue of reciprocal relationships between the logic of law, positivistic theory of the logic of law, and legal semiotics is among the most important questionsof the modern theoretical jurisprudence. This paper has not attempted to provide any comprehensive account of the modern jurisprudence (and legal logic).Instead, the emphasis has been laid on those aspects of positivist legal theories, logical studies of law and legal semiotics that allow tracing the common pointsor the differences between these paradigms of legal (...) research. One of the theses of the present work is that, at the comparative methodological level, the limits oflegal semiotics and its object of inquiry could only be defined in relation to legal positivism and logical studies of law. This paper also argues for a proper positionfor legal semiotics in between legal positivism and legal logic. The differences between legal positivism, legal logic and legal semiotics are best captured in theissue of referent. (shrink)

The issue of reciprocal relationships between the logic of law, positivistic theory of the logic of law, and legal semiotics is among the most important questionsof the modern theoretical jurisprudence. This paper has not attempted to provide any comprehensive account of the modern jurisprudence (and legal logic).Instead, the emphasis has been laid on those aspects of positivist legal theories, logical studies of law and legal semiotics that allow tracing the common pointsor the differences between these paradigms of legal (...) research. One of the theses of the present work is that, at the comparative methodological level, the limits oflegal semiotics and its object of inquiry could only be defined in relation to legal positivism and logical studies of law. This paper also argues for a proper positionfor legal semiotics in between legal positivism and legal logic. The differences between legal positivism, legal logic and legal semiotics are best captured in theissue of referent. (shrink)

Originally written in 1990, this reviews largely late 20th century debates on the study of law as Logic, Discourse, or Experience; the Unity of the Legal System and the Problem of Reference; Semiotic Presuppositions of Traditional Jurisprudence (Austin, Hart, Kelsen, Dworkin, Legal Realisms); then turns to legal philosophies explicitly Employing Forms of Semiotics (Kalinowski, the Italian Analytical School, Rhetorical and Pragmatic Approaches, Sociological and Socio-Linguistic Approaches, Peircian Legal Semiotics, Greimasian Legal Semiotics and Aesthetic/Symbolic Approaches). A major section (...) then offers (from a largely Greimasian point of view) some hypotheses for legal semiotics on the Problem of Reference, Semantic and Pragmatic Levels, Semiotic Groups and “The Legal Culture”, Normativity and Justification, and finally considers the implications for particular legal phenomena: the “Legal System”, Legal Institutions, Legal Codes, Legal Rules, Rights, Courtroom Behaviour: Witness and Counsel, The Judge: Justification of Decisions on Law, and the Criminal Justice Process. A conclusion addresses the status of legal semiotics. (shrink)

The paper articulates Deleuze & Guattari’s semiotics towards a semiotic of law through a discussion of the intensive semiotics of the field of emergence and pragmatic semiotics of social power. Within the framework of the pragmatic semiotics, it is argued that the crucial tension is how social machines and their regimes of signs operate with the intensive semiotics of the field of emergence. The signifying regime of the State social machine constructs itself on the excluded (...) foundation of the field of emergence, and what is lost are the real ontological and social conditions of emergence, intensity and affect. In contrast, the counter-signifying regime of the war social machine actively operates with the intensive semiotic of the field of emergence, and develops an image of legality and regime of signs that taps the field of emergence for social organisation and expression. Returning to the issue of emergence and legality, the concept of Emergent Law is developed as a war social machine, abstract machine, assemblage, and regime of signs, that operates a semiotic that is developed in terms of an intensive semiotics that is open to and taps the forces of the field of emergence. (shrink)

This essay attempts to explore trademark law and the marks themselves from a semiotic viewpoint to provide a deeper understanding to (trademark) law as a system of signs. Although the language of trademark law may suggest slightly different meanings, for the purpose of this essay “trademark” will refer to an area of law (unless otherwise indicated) and “mark” will refer to the individual sign. The first part of this essay will provide a brief overview of semiotics. Second, it will (...) outline a general look at trademark law as set forth in the Lanham Act. The third section is a semiotic approach to provide a deeper understanding of trademark law. Finally, the essay will analyze a seminal trademark case whilst using semiotics to address legal meaning within the case. Semiotics teaches that no absolute meaning can be found. This essay, then, attempts to secure at least one particular meaning of the Qualitex case and what it means in trademark law today. (shrink)