Author: Christopher Mark Hutton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137016167
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
This book introduces ideas about word meaning in the context of law. It analyzes cases from common law jurisdictions that concern the meaning, definition and legal status of individual words, labels and categories. The focus is on the question of how law assigns authority over word meaning in different circumstances and in different domains of law.
Author: Brian G. Slocum
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022630485X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
Brian G. Slocum s "Ordinary Meaning "offers an extended legal-linguistic analysis of the eponymous interpretive doctrine. A centuries-old consensus exists among courts and legal scholars that words in legal texts should be interpreted in light of accepted standards of communication. Therefore the questions of what makes some meaning the ordinary one, and how the determinants of ordinary meaning are identified and conceptualized, are of crucial importance to the interpretation of legal texts. Arguing against reliance on acontextual dictionary definitions, "Ordinary Meaning" rigorously explores the contributions that specific context makes to meaning, along with linguistic phenomena such as indexicals and quantifiers. Slocum provides a theory and a robust general framework for how the determinants of ordinary meaning should be identified and developed."
Author: Irving Browne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 560
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Book Description
Author: Tsz-Shan Wei
Publisher: Open Dissertation Press
ISBN: 9781374712195
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
This dissertation, "Law and Language: Problems of Meaning and Interpretation in the Hong Kong Courts" by Tsz-shan, Wei, 韋子山, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled Law and Language: Problems of Meaning and Interpretation in the Hong Kong Courts submitted by Wei Tsz Shan for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in November 2000 When we talk about legal disputes in law cases, all of them can be generalized as the question: does 'X' fall within the meaning of 'Y'?; that is, they can be understood as questions of 'categorization'. A legal judgment is actually a decision of categorizing a factual scenario (i.e. the alleged act) into a 'category' (i.e. the provision of a statute). If the act of the defendant (i.e. X) is considered by judges (or the jury) as falling within the provision of the statute (i.e. Y), the defendant shall be convicted. In considering whether 'X' (i.e. a concept, an event or an object) is 'Y', the legal practitioners have to know the meaning of 'X' and 'Y'. However, it is not easy to clarify what do 'X' and "Y' mean. Lord Reid's remarks, 'Normally, the meaning of words, is a question of law for the courts' and 'the meaning of an ordinary word of the English language is not a question of law', can be perceived as a precise description of the problems of meaning in legal interpretation. Language is intrinsically indeterminate. The legal practitioners are working with the problems of ambiguity and vagueness, open texture of words and penumbra of uncertainty, and blurred word boundaries etc. The adoption of different interpretive approaches and other factors, such as habitual collocation, legislative intents and intended social effects, authenticity of the two language texts and hierarchical structure of the courts will also contribute to the complexity of interpretation. i Under a monolingual legal system, legal practitioners normally have to face the problems of meaning of one language only. Under a bilingual (or multi-lingual) legal system, with the addition of one (or more) language(s), they have to face, at least, one more problems i.e. translatability, which will complicate the job of legal interpretation. In Hong Kong, because legal bilingualism is practised, both the Chinese and the English language texts are equally authentic. Neither text shall prevail over the other. If discrepancies in meaning exist between the two language texts, reconciliation has to be found. The problems of translatability will not only aggravate the already-existing problems of legal interpretation, but also create more. Two approaches: the dictionary and prototype theory have been employed to see if they can, or cannot, help to deal with the problems of meaning in law. The dictionary and prototype theory have been selected because the former serves the purpose of defining meanings; the latter is concerned with classification. Seven court cases have been selected as the testing grounds for the contribution of these two means. Six of them took place in Hong Kong and one is from the jurisdiction of the United States. The focal points of discussion of this thesis are (1) how word meanings are interpreted in different legal contexts; (2) what problems of interpretation will be; and (3) whether the dictionary and prototype theory have a role to play in solving problems of legal interpretation. ii DOI: 10.5353/th_b2973969 Subjects: Law - China - Hong Kong - Interpretation and constru
Author: Giles Jacob
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 790
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Book Description
Author: Kent Greenawalt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199842434
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
In Legal Interpretation, Kent Greenawalt focuses on the complex and multi-faceted topic of textual interpretation of the law. All law needs to be interpreted, and there are many ways to do it. But what sorts of questions must one seek to answer in interpreting law and what approach should one take in each case? Whose interpretations should be prioritized? Why would one be drawn to one strategy over another? And should legal interpretation seek to satisfy specific aims or general objectives? In order to provide the answers to these questions, Greenawalt explores the ways in which interpretive strategies from other disciplines--the philosophy of language, literary and musical interpretation, religious interpretation, and general interpretive theory--can augment and enrich methods of legal interpretation. Over the course of the book, he suggests how such forms of interpretation are analogous to legal interpretation--and points to those cases in which interpretation must rest on the distinctive aspects of legal theory, such as is the case with private documents. Furthermore, Greenawalts meditation suggests that interpretive strategies from other disciplines can shed light on the essential nature of legal interpretation and provide roads by which to account for dissonance between various methods of interpretation. Legal Interpretation is a thought-provoking reflection on the ways that insights from a range of intellectual traditions can deepen our understanding of law, particularly with regard to constitutional law.
Author: Giles Jacob
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 782
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Book Description
Author: Giles Jacob
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1102
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Book Description
Author: Graham Bradfield
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780702147999
Category : Constitutional law
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
This is a collection of papers from the legal theory conference held at the Rand Afrikaans University in September 1997. The conference was divided into six sessions, two on jurisprudence, two on common law, and two on constitutional law. Two papers and two responses were presented in each session.
Author: Antonin Scalia
Publisher: West Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780314275554
Category : Judicial process
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In this groundbreaking book, Scalia and Garner systematically explain all the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation in an engaging and informative style with hundreds of illustrations from actual cases. Is a burrito a sandwich? Is a corporation entitled to personal privacy? If you trade a gun for drugs, are you using a gun in a drug transaction? The authors grapple with these and dozens of equally curious questions while explaining the most principled, lucid, and reliable techniques for deriving meaning from authoritative texts. Meanwhile, the book takes up some of the most controversial issues in modern jurisprudence. What, exactly, is textualism? Why is strict construction a bad thing? What is the true doctrine of originalism? And which is more important: the spirit of the law, or the letter? The authors write with a well-argued point of view that is definitive yet nuanced, straightforward yet sophisticated.
