The Great Divide in Legal Discourse

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.

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SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL AND LEGAL DISCOURSE OF ETHNIC AND NATIONAL CONFLICTS IN RUSSIA

Sociopolitical sciences ◽

10.33693/2223-0092-2020-10-4-53-64 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (4) ◽

pp. 53-64

Author(s):

ANDREY KURIUKIN ◽

Keyword(s):

Modern Science ◽

Legal Discourse ◽

Legal Regulation ◽

Ethnic Relations ◽

Soviet Society ◽

The Russian Federation ◽

The Russian Empire ◽

New Research ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

Developing System

The issue of ethnic relations and the conflicts generated by them is acutely relevant. Many branches and directions of modern science study it. Political science and jurisprudence are in the foreground of the modern study of ethno-national conflictology. Over a long period of research, they have developed several influential approaches that have become widespread. The growing complexity of the surrounding political and legal reality, the escalation of conflict in society, including ethno-national, require the search and application of new research paradigms. One of these is the analysis of political and legal discourse, which consists in studying the ways of how legal meanings, ideas, opinions and preferences, which are carried by legislators, are technically and meaningfully embodied in the texts of normative acts, subsequently forming a specific political and legal reality. Analyzing the domestic ethno-conflictological political and legal discourse, the author concludes that in the era of the Russian Empire, the legalization of ethno-national relations had little attention from legislators, the documents adopted in the 19th century carried widespread ideas of the legislative theory and existed unchanged until 1917. The basic paradigm of the Soviet political and legal regulation of ethno-national relations was the ideological dogmas of the theorists of Marxism-Leninism, within which, in Soviet society, such a phenomenon as an ethno-national conflict was denied, but, in fact, existed. At the present stage, after the acute events of the second half of the 1980s - 1990s, a serious system of political and legal regulation of ethno-national relations was developed. It bore fruit. Today, the domestic political and legal regulation of ethno-national relations has the character of a developing system designed to adequately respond to changes. The article can be used to improve the state social and legal policy of the Russian Federation. Also, the materials presented can provide the interest of students, graduate students, teachers, researchers and other people who are interested in the current social, political and legal development of Russia.

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The Racialization of the African-American and Asian-American Citizen: A Comparative Legal Analysis

Legal Studies Undergraduate Journal ◽

10.15353/lsuj.v3i0.433 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

pp. 30-41

Author(s):

Mallory Yung

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Asian Americans ◽

Asian American ◽

Model Minority ◽

Legal Discourse ◽

Court Cases ◽

Legal Analysis ◽

Critical Race ◽

Social Hierarchies ◽

American Citizen

The perception of racial tensions in North American settler countries has historically been focused on the Black/White relationship, as has much of the theoretical legal discourse surrounding the concept of “race”. Accordingly, the scope of much critical race scholarship has been restricted such that it rarely acknowledges the racial tensions that persist between different racially-excluded minorities. This paper hopes to expand and integrate the examination of Black and Asian-American racialization that critical race scholars have previously revealed. It will do this by historicizing the respective contours of Black and Asian-American racialization processes through legislation and landmark court cases in a neo-colonial context. The defining features of racialization which have culminated in the ultimate divergence of each group’s racialization will be compared and contrasted. This divergence sees the differential labeling of Asian-Americans as the ‘model minority’ while Blacks continue to be subjugated by modern modalities of exclusionary systems of control. The consequences of this divergence in relation to preserving existing racial and social hierarchies will be discussed in the final sections of this paper.

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