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.

The second edition of the Criminal Law Sourcebook has been significantly expanded in order to provide law students with a comprehensive selection of key materials drawn from law reports,statutes, Law Commission Consultation Papers and Reports, and Home Office publications. The materials reflect the range of topics taught on the vast majority of undergraduate and CPE criminal law modules, and provide a platform from which the reader can embark upon a more critical evaluation of both theory and doctrine. Extensive extracts are included from a number of recent landmark rulings, including decisions by the House of Lords in B v DPP (defence of mistake), R v Smith (objective test for the defence of provocation), R v Hinks (whether the recipient of a gift can be a thief), and R v Powell and Daniels; R v English (scope of accessorial liability for murder), and the Court of Appeal's ruling in In Re A (conjoined twins). Recent statutory initiatives that have been incorporated include the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act 1998, and the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000. The impact of the Human Rights Act 1998, in so far as it relates to substantive criminal law, is also covered. Substantial extracts are provided from all relevant Law Commission and Home Office law reform publications. In addition to the draft Criminal Code Bill, materials have been selected dealing with reform of sexual offences, consent, conspiracy to defraud, deception offences, offences against the person, accessorial liability and involuntary manslaughter.

Even in multicultural North America, few whites, blacks, or Hispanics have extensive experience or understanding of Asian culture. For experienced police officers, intelligence analysts, correctional officers, and prosecutors, the problems of cultural differences in behavior remain complex and problematic. This book addresses these specific law enforcement problems, and supplies law enforcement professionals with information and strategies for easier arrests, more accurate intelligence, more successful prosecutions, and fewer problems during incarceration.

This book provides for the first time in English a wide range of Byzantine legal sources and explains Byzantine law through these sources, thereby offering a scholarly introduction to the background and content of Byzantine law.

This engaging book examines the origins and first effects of the concept ‘legal semiotics’, focusing on the inventor of the term, Roberta Kevelson (1931-1998). 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.

The ‘law-language-law’ theme is deeply engraved in Occidental culture, more so than contemporary studies on the subject currently illustrate. This insightful book creates awareness of these cultural roots and shows how language and themes in law can be richer than studying a simple mutuality of motives. Rethinking Law and Language unveils today’s problems with the two faces of language: the analogue and the digital, on the basis of which our smart phones and Artificial Intelligence create modern life.

Street-Level Sovereignty: The Intersection of Space and Law is a collection of scholarship that considers the experience of law that is subject to social interpretation for its meaning and importance within the constitutive legal framework of race, deviance, property, and the communal investiture in health and happiness. This book examines the intersection of spatiality and law, through the construction of place, and how law is materially framed.