An exploration of the semantic domain of legal language

Semiotica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (209) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Pi-Chan Hu ◽  
Jian Li
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
Semantic Domain ◽  
Criminal Culpability

AbstractWhenever necessary, legal professionals expand or restrict the semantic domain of legal terms to justify their reasoning or ruling. The semantic domain expands or contracts in size depending on the different approaches towards interpretations adopted by legal professionals. This research illustrates the interpretations of judges and prosecutors of legal terms with empirical cases and court opinions. In the field of Criminal Law, the semantic domain often leads to the domain of criminal culpability and punishment. The shift in the semantic domain of legal terms matters a great deal to all of the stakeholders in a case. When the domain grows too broad, it will criminalize citizens beyond the intention of the Legislature. When the domain shrinks too much, the victims will not receive justice. Therefore, legal professionals have to be exceedingly modest and cautious when playing their roles as law interpreters.

What Is Criminal Culpability?

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-82
Author(s):  
Alexander Sarch
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Criminal Culpability

Chapter 2 aims to elucidate the concept of criminal culpability. Since the project of the book is to analyze, evaluate, and ultimately defend certain criminal law doctrines that impute mental states on the basis of equal culpability, the chapter explains what criminal culpability is. Chapter 2 presents the author’s theory of culpability and aims to show why it offers an attractive way to think about this concept. The theory falls squarely within the insufficient regard tradition, but the chapter fleshes out details in new ways to strengthen the theory and solve certain problems for this sort of position. The chapter is divided into two main parts. The first is ecumenical and aims to bring as many into the broad church of the insufficient regard theory as possible. The chapter does this by highlighting the explanatory power of the author’s version of the theory (particularly the requirement to manifest bad attitudes in action before criminal liability attaches and the criminal law’s general disinterest in motives and other unmanifested mental states). The chapter also shows how the theory can accommodate both sides in certain controversies about the criminal law. The second half of the chapter adopts a normative stance and provides arguments for how these controversies should be resolved. This insufficient regard theory is used as the basis for the arguments going forward in the book.

The Limits of Criminal Culpability

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-175
Author(s):  
Mark Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Core Concept ◽  
The Core ◽  
Criminal Culpability ◽  
Subjectivist Theory

The authors of Crime and Culpability hold a subjectivist theory of criminal culpability according to which the core concept in culpability is subjective recklessness, negligence is not culpable, and it is irrelevant to culpability whether or not a criminal act results in harm. I argue against these three theses and criticize the authors’ views on the structure of criminal law, criminal defences, criminal attempts, and codification.

scholarly journals Towards a Conceptualization of Legal English as a Lingua Franca?

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Patrizia Anesa
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
Legal Communication ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
National Languages

English is de facto reinforcing its role as the language of international legal communication. Indeed, while different national languages continue to play a crucial role in the definition, the execution, and the application of the law, English is increasingly employed by non-native legal professionals worldwide. Thus, this study focuses on the use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in legal settings and aims to offer considerations towards the conceptualization of Legal English as a Lingua Franca (LELF). As English is considered a global asset in legal communication, it is argued that a finer problematization of LELF is imperative. In this respect, the study also discusses whether it is possible to apply the concept of a lingua franca to legal language tout court or whether the distinctive features of legal discourse across systems make the definition of LELF inapplicable from a conceptual perspective. This article also offers a reflection on the main concerns which arise regarding the widespread use of English in legal settings, especially in the light of the specificities of different legal systems, legal cultures and communities of practice. Thus, all stakeholders involved should adopt a more reflexive approach in order to go beyond the unproblematic acceptance of LELF across legal settings and to be more aware of the implications and consequences that its usage entails.

The Criminal and Civil Law Concept of A Document

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Ewelina Zgajewska-Rytelewska
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Legislative Power ◽  
Semantic Domain ◽  
Legal Document ◽  
Broad Interpretation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Func Tion

According to objective literature, in each of the foregoing areas of law, the term “document” has a different precision in the content used to perform a particular function, in order to obtain a certain probative and legislative power. Despite the extensive scope of the concept of civil and legal “document”, the legislature does not limit its semantic domain. The legal status created by the legislator allows for the adaptation of the term “document”, to the new terms used by the legislature in the definition of legal and regu- latory acts.The theoretical and broad interpretation of the term “document” in criminal law and civil law causes a significant increase in its mission and values. With the increase in meaning, there is also an increase in the func- tion of the document. This is the result of continuous technical and techno- logical development, which results in increasingly new forms of documents and their protection against counterfeiting, rewriting and unlawful use.

scholarly journals The inconvenience of the reasonable person standard in criminal law

Derecho PUCP ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 505-509
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Pérez-León Acevedo
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Reasonable Person ◽  
Objective Standard ◽  
Reasonable Person Standard ◽  
Criminal Culpability ◽  
Self Defence

Following American legal sources, I argue that the use of the reasonable person standard in criminal law is inaccurate and unfair, and, therefore, inconvenient to evaluate human behaviour based on three arguments which address flaws of the standard under analysis. Firstly, this standard is  by definition  abstract, theoretical  and  general, not  reflecting appropriately the person’s sensory and ideational perception of the situation. Secondly, the trend in American legislation and case-law is to apply, in criminal cases, e.g., self-defence, a hybrid criterion, which consists in the consideration of a person’s belief and the correspondence of such a belief to what a reasonable person would believe under the circumstances, as opposed to a purely objective standard. The principle of individual criminal culpability underlies this. Thirdly, the reasonable person standard imposes a sort of majority’s dictatorship by perpetuating a predominant culture disregarding the viewpoints from minority groups.

scholarly journals The History of Nordic Legal Culture and Court Culture: The Story of What Should not Have Been, but Still Came to Be

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-67
Author(s):  
Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Court Culture ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Legal Procedure ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe story of the making of a Nordic legal culture and court culture appears, at first glance, to be a story of what should not have been. Culture is about commonalities arising from common experiences. However, the similarities between the Nordic countries’ political history are limited, with no common institutions before the late nineteenth century, large language similarities but no common legal language, and—most importantly—no common legal procedure. Still, the natural conditions in the very north of Europe came to shape the political and legal systems in similar ways, stimulating the desire to create a Nordic legal culture in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the Nordic Meeting for Lawyers playing a crucial role. Hence, law in the Nordic countries shares several characteristics today: a strong legislative tradition and strong courts with lay participation, accessible legal language in legislation and court decisions and orality in legal procedure, a small number of legal professionals and a small and pragmatic legal science. These characteristics can be viewed as building blocks in an overarching characteristic of Nordic legal culture and court culture: dialogue.

scholarly journals Lexical patterns in customary sayings

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Fadzeli Jaafar
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Political System ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Semantic Domain ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
And Function ◽  
Domain Concept

Customary sayings are the traditional words delivered in the form of poetry and practiced in various social activities in Negeri Sembilan in marriage, family, criminal law and administration. Sudeen (1995) recorded that studies on customary sayings have been conducted from the early 20th century in the history of custom, marriage system, political system and the dispensation of inheritance.This study examines the content words and function words in customary sayings that have been categorized based on the semantic domain concept by Gliozzo (2006).  Based on the content words and function words, this study has identified the customary words in the corpus data. The results show that more function words were used in the customary sayings.  However, content words dominated the list of customary sayings, such as Datuk and custom. The function words 'nan' and 'dek' were found in all domains of the study namely, political, social and economic domains. These findings indicate that function words are not only grammatically functional, but also used to give an aesthetic impact through the articulation style of the local dialect.  On the other hand, the analysis of the content words shows that the use of customary words is influenced by the environment and culture of Adat Perpatih.

scholarly journals Criminal Law Reform Now

2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 282-291
Author(s):  
John Child ◽  
Jonathan Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reform Initiative ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Political Preference ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Law Making

The principal aim of this article is to introduce a new criminal law reform initiative: The Criminal Law Reform Now Network (CLRN Network). The article begins in Part 1 by setting the scene for law reform in this jurisdiction, exposing and discussing four major challenges that await any would-be reformer or network: 1) The Political Red Line, 2) The Political Preference for Simple Headlines, 3) The Political Indifference to Principles of Criminalisation, and 4) The Division Between Academics and Practitioners. From here, in Part 2, we introduce the ambitions and processes envisaged for the new CLRN Network. Launched in 2017, the mission of the CLRN Network is to facilitate collaboration between academics and other legal experts to gather and disseminate comprehensible proposals for criminal law reform to the wider community. The aim is to include members of the public and mainstream media as well as legal professionals, police, policymakers and politicians. Proposals from the CLRN Network might require legislation, but will not be restricted to such projects. Reforms which public bodies such as the Home Office, Police or CPS could bring about by internal policies may be included, as well as reforms which require the support of some of the judiciary, bearing in mind the proper judicial constraints on law making. The CLRN Network will be ready to consult with and make suggestions to anyone who has the power to bring about reform.

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