Jan Maurits Broekman

Taking the letter of the law literally would equal the death of our hopeand expectation that law and its practices of justice will createimproved social realities. This insight is, however, seldom formulatedin legal discourse. A more profound analysis shows how ``the literal'',taken as a legal expression, covers the management of law's semanticsrather than delivering the precise description of a state of affairs inlaw. This pertains in particular to the ``well informed citizen'' (A.Schutz). Can legal meanings that should enter and perhaps change thecitizen's life sphere for the better, transcend the boundaries of legaldiscourse by means of appealing to a literal meaning?

A cluster of issues in the context of legaleducation shows the importance of legalsemiotics: new forms of citizenship, new ideas on e-education, the recent design ofe-educational programs that focus the featuresof institutional life, the concept of a`learning society' are this cluster's elements.Opinions of European Union Institutions stimulate to conceive modern society in thelight of these issues. It leads to theformulation of a fifth freedom in the Union,(after freedom of persons and goods, servicesand capital) which is the freedom toparticipate in a ``learning society''. Thepractice of that freedom leads to developinge-educational programs for institutionalskills.

High alert exists when the semiotic components of electronic communication are challenged to induce responsive citizenship. Evaluations of the uses of existing government websites are particularly important in that regard. They form a high tech network of data and communication efforts but do not contribute to the education of citizens. Do we dislike education when carried out by government? Governments seldom focus education as a force to change attitude and mentality of the citizenry. To educate means to create a difference through an educated appreciation of others – a necessary condition for life in institutions, supported by citizens who themselves grew up in the Western hemisphere with its overemphasis on ego-directed national goals, values and interests. One observes how materials for an electronically enhanced education program, made available in government web sites, remain out of use. An education deficit must be mentioned, which in its turn underestimates the contribution to semiotics in law and politics, in particular where theoretical foundations of the virtual are at stake.

The sign-character of legal expressions, unveiled by semiotic approaches, relates to the main features of the world around individuals and thus constitutes their biography. Major headlines of Kevelson’s biography are presented in this chapter—her early empowering of women’s emancipationist movements as well as her late academic and international scientific career. The latter lead to bibliographical notes and her perhaps not final bibliography we offer. However, this Brief provides a most recent, corrected and completed Kevelson bibliography, which is prepared in this chapter. Of importance is our observation that any such bibliography should consist in two parts: a pre-academic and an academic part. The first is lost and only vaguely mirrored in the second. Available data and techniques, as well as limitations of the work are thoroughly discussed. The most important signifying concepts are presented and discussed in this chapter; they are (a) dynamism, (b) textuality, and (c) pragmatism.

Modern times show a deeply rooted fascination for signs. Philosophers like Charles Sanders Peirce already registered that change of mind at the edge of the 20th century. He inspired Roberta Kevelson in her design of a method of knowledge seeking and questioning. She applied in that method many ‘How’s of ‘Why’ and ‘Why’s of ‘How’ in Law and the Legal Sciences. It formed the basis for unfolding the concept of legal semiotics. The latter highlighted new insights on signs in legal practice and in legal education.

Considerations of ‘education’ fascinate in the case of Kevelson for various reasons. They do, however, also make limitations visible. Fascination and limitation go hand in hand, and form in this case a clear profile that initiates a plea to develop further research. This chapter focuses on the nature of Semiotics, furthermore on the implications of Kevelson’s understanding of the concept of dialogue as a valuable contrast to other forms of communication, on a complete absence of any notion of the engenderment of Digital– or E–education and related forms of unfolding E–communication during the last decade of her scientific and educational activity, and the absence of personal educational experience in a Law School.

A dynamic transition of language signs appears to be the key issue in the semiotic project. This is, as Kevelson suspected, particularly of essence in law and legal discourse. Semioticians thus determine the relations between meaning and reality so that we think to succeed to articulate ‘how things really are’. Signs have for the lawyer legal quality because they reach him or her via legal discourse in his professional and social discourse. Legal signs are the result of a legal codification before a lawyer can unfold any legal activity. We thus consider the need to qualify (a) how signs become specifically legal, (b) whether there are parallel processes in other fields of professional signification, and (c) how the social field comes to accept those signs in their legal sense and evolves in accordance with the legal meanings of them.

Social life is life spoken. Speech acts appear of central importance in studying law, as semiotics underline. Law is multidimensional, lawyers speak everyday language and legal language and the meaning of their words is seldom restricted to one level of significance. Is Law’s discourse a different manifestation of linguistic expressiveness? Signs in law reinforce and enrich social life while introducing new dimensions of meaning. This was Greimas’ important contribution to semiotics, as we understand. It was also the reason why Lyotard unfolded his theory of narratives, once confronted with law in post-modernity. Those insights in what Kevelson named the n-dimensionality of meaning and significance in life widens the forces of freedom to create commonness.

This volume provides a critical roadmap through the major historical sources of legal semiotics as we know them today. The history of legal semiotics, now at least a century old, has never been written (a non-event itself pregnant with semiotic possibility). As a consequence, its sources are seldom clearly exposed and, as word, object and meaning change, are sometimes lost. They reach from an English translation of the 1916 inaugural lecture of the first Chair in Legal Significs at the Amsterdam University, via mid 20th century studies on "property" or "contract," to equally fascinating essays on contemporary semiotic problems produced by former students of the Roberta Kevelson Semiotics Roundtable Seminar at Penn State University 2012 and 2013. Together, the materials in this book weave the fabric of semiotics and significs, two names for the unfolding of semiotics in law and legal discourse at least until the second half of the 20th century, and both of which covered a lawyer's focus on sign and meaning in law. The latter is embedded within the cultural imperatives of the civilization that gave these terms meaning and made them an effective tool for the dissection of law, its reconstitution as an instrument to be used by the lawyer to advance the interests of her clients, and for judges as a means to restructure language as a narrative of law whose power could bend behavior to its strictures. Legal semiotics has become an indispensible part of the elite lawyer's toolkit and a fundamental approach to analysis of legal texts. Two previous volumes published in 2011 and 2012 explored the conceptual, methodological and epistemological progress in the field of legal semiotics, the modern forms of semiotics study, and the mechanics of meaning making processes by lawyers. Yet the great lessons of semiotics requires a focus on the origins of the concepts and frameworks that would become contemporary legal semiotics, its origins as an object of the consciousness of meaning making-one whose roots, as lessons for the oracular conversations of law, are expanded in this volume.

This book examines the concept of meaning and our general understanding of reality in a legal and philosophical context. Starting from the premise that meaning is a matter of linguistic and other forms of articulation, it considers the inherent philosophical consequences. Part I presents Klages', Derrida's, Von Hofmannsthal's and Wittgenstein's explorations of silence as a source of articulation and meaning. Debates about 20th century psychologism gave the attitude concept a pivotal role; it illustrates the importance of the discovery that a word is globally qualified as 'the basic unit of language'. This is mirrored in the fact that we understand reality as a matter of particles and thus interpret the real as a component of an all-embracing 'particle story'. Each chapter of the book focuses on an aspect of legal semiotics related to the chapter's theme: for instance on the meaning of a Judge's 'Saying for Law', on law students training in varying attitudes or on the ties between law and language. Part II of the book illustrates our general understanding of reality as a matter of particles and partitioning, and examines texts that prove that particle thinking is basic for our meaning concept. It shows that physics, quantum theory, holism, and modern brain research focusing on human linguistic capabilities, confirm their ties to the particle story. In contrast, the book concludes that partitions and particles are neither a fact in the history of the cosmos nor a determinant of knowledge and the sciences, and that meaning is a process: a constellation rather than a fixation. This is manifest once one understands meaning as the result of continuously changing attitudes, which create our narratives on cosmos and creation. The book proposes a new key for meaning: a linguistic occurrence anchored in dimensions of human narrativity.

This engaging book examines the origins and first effects of the concept ‘legal semiotics’, focusing on the inventor of the term, Roberta Kevelson. It highlights the importance of her ideas and works which have contributed to legal theory, legal interpretation and philosophy of language. Kevelson’s work is particularly relevant today, in our world of global electronic communication networks which rely so much on language, signs, signals and shortcuts. Kevelson could not have foreseen the 21st century, yet the story of her work and influence deserves more attention as it is key to our understanding of modern legal discourse and why law fascinates and is accepted in modern society. The authors draw on Kevelson’s hitherto unknown Office Papers and Notes, and a biographical examination points to key influences in her work such as the early feminist movements of the US East Coast, the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and the semiotics of Thomas Sebeok. This forms the basis for a more encompassing research of Kevelson’s position, work and philosophical background, which the authors call for. A quick and enlightening read, this book interests a wide range of readers with an interest in legal history and the fields which Kevelson both drew on and influenced, including lawyers, students and scholars.

Lawyers write, blog and are otherwise producers of words; they structure public life through legal discourse and integrate all issues that reinforce legal reasoning. Even if one is inclined not to justify the power of their words in the context of a democratic theory, one is hardly able to challenge its public acceptance. But semiotic analyses harden the question whether these emperors wear nothing but robes. That attitude intensifies where medicine becomes increasingly relevant for legal discourse, as becomes clear where for instance US political viewpoints bring bioethical issues to the Courts. One major theme in today’s medicine pertains to identity in its psychological, philosophical and social dimensions. Identity thus becomes a groundbreaking semiotic issue in law and medicine; both discourses are particular important to the otherness of the other. A US criminal law case interests here (Harrington v. State of Iowa, 2003; cited as: 659N.W.2d 509). The case is decided with “information about what the person has stored in his brain”. A chain of signs is involved: from “brain-function” to “brain-storage” via “brain-scan” to “brain-fingerprint”, for which the case became famous. A long series of signs and meanings belong here to intertwined discourses. Central is a particular sign in each discourse: “brain” means brain scan, and “fingerprint” means law! The two display trading mechanisms, which determine the otherness of the other and the self! The chain of signs in the Harrington case shows inter-disciplinarity in law and inter-discursivity among law and medicine. The trading itself underlines the semiotic dimensions in cyberspace, in particular the semiotics of the virtual (Hayles, Kurzweil) and their effects on legal discourse.

The question of the philosophical basis of medical science and medical practice is considered under three closely related themes: (i) the doctor-patient relationship, (ii) the structure of the medical-ethical discourse, and (iii) the problem of philosophical founding in relation to medical conduct. The doctor-patient relationship is regarded as a transformational relation. Acceptance of the illness of the patient, the construction of a complaint as a necessary condition — and not a description of an existing reality — as well as the establishment of a common interest are determinants of that relation. They are related to the dominant form of science and thought in medicine, namely application. This is typical for the Standard Medical-Ethical Discussion (SMED), its scope and its rationality. The third issue leads to the thesis that this particular rationality is not a sufficient ground for considering the medical discourse to be founded in philosophy.