This chapter reviews the research of social science and linguistics on power, ambiguity, and deception when treated separately at the macro institutional level and at the micro non-institutional level, noting the lack of studies of macro institutional power employed in the same context with micro non-institutional individuals. The characteristics of institutional power, control, authority, domination, reinterpretation, inequality, and persuasion are transparent and non-negotiable in the legal arena, in contrast with their absence for the powerless persons with whom the legal institution interacts. In non-institutional individual contexts these characteristics are often negotiable. When institutional power interacts with individuals who lack that power, the government’s non-negotiable advantage would appear to be transparent, but this is not always true. This outwardly transparent power also can be realized through the use of ambiguity, which can contain deceptiveness. This chapter reprises the research on ambiguity and deception, in the contexts of both law and linguistics.