Common law lawyers should mind their trial practices
understanding, identifying, and correcting a semiotic imbalance
pp. 115-128
in: Jan Broekman, Francis J. Mootz (eds), The semiotics of law in legal education, Berlin, Springer, 2011Abstract
This text is discusses the separate understandings of the "law" among the Civil Law and Common Law traditions through the views of three major semioticians, and, assuming that the differences between the Civil Law and Common Law have an effect on legal semiotics, to determine whether differences in the understanding and practice of legal semiotics between both traditions, until now relatively unnoticed, enriches and refines future legal semiotics. Research is therefore first in differences between the two systems pertaining to judicial authority, furthermore to the civil procedure and finally to the criminal procedure involved in each legal tradition. Of central interest is in this context a specific 'semiotic imbalance", so that the concept of "Law" in semiotic research in Common Law legal semiotics differs from Civil Law legal semiotics. No difference has a greater effect on the semiotics of the law than the practice of trial law.