Legal Semiotics    |    Plain Language   |    Legal Usage 

I.  Legal Semiotics & Critical Legal Theory

       BOOKS

MANUEL ATIENZA & JUAN RUIZ MANERO, A THEORY OF LEGAL SENTENCES (Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998).

BRIAN BIX, LAW, LANGUAGE, AND LEGAL DETERMINACY (Oxford University Press 1993).

HAIG A. BOSMAJIAN, METAPHOR AND REASON IN JUDICIAL OPINIONS (Southern Illinois University Press 1992).

FREDERICK BOWERS, LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF LEGISLATIVE EXPRESSION (University of British Columbia Press 1989).

TERESA BROSTOFF & ANN SINSHEIMER, LEGAL ENGLISH: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LEGAL LANGUAGE AND CULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES (Oceana Publications 2000).

MARGARET M. BRYANT, ENGLISH IN THE LAW COURTS: THE PART THAT ARTICLES, PREPOSITIONS AND CONJUNCTIONS PLAY IN LEGAL DECISIONS (Columbia University Press 1930).

CLARITY (1983 - ) available at http://www.clarity-international.net/.

WILLIAM E. CONKLIN, THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MODERN LEGAL DISCOURSE :  THE JURIDICAL PRODUCTION AND THE DISCLOSURE OF SUFFERING (Ashgate 1998).

JOHN M. CONLEY & WILLIAM M. O'BARR, JUST WORDS: LAW, LANGUAGE, AND POWER (University of Chicago Press 1998).

SAMUEL J. M. DONNELLY, THE LANGUAGE AND USES OF RIGHTS: A BIOPSY OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (University Press of America 1994).

FORENSIC LINGUISTICS: THE INTENATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE AND THE LAW (1994 - ) available at http://builder.bham.ac.uk/forensiclinguistics/home.asp.

RONALD REED GARET, CREATIVITY AND COMMITMENT: AN INTRODUCTION TO LAW (University of Southern California 1995).

JOHN GIBBONS, LANGUAGE AND THE LAW (Longman 1994).

PETER GOODRICH, LANGUAGES OF LAW: FROM LOGICS OF MEMORY TO NOMADIC MASKS (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1990).

BERNARD S. JACKSON, LAW, FACT, AND NARRATIVE COHERENCE (Deborah Charles Publications 1988).

BERNARD S. JACKSON, LEGAL SEMIOTICS AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW (Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law 1994).

ROBERTA KEVELSON, THE LAW AS A SYSTEM OF SIGNS (Plenum Press 1988).

DENNIS R. KLINCK, THE WORD OF THE LAW (Carleton University Press 1992).

LANGUAGE IN THE JUDICIAL PROCESS (1995 - ) available at http://www.ljp.utk.edu/welcome.htm.

JUDITH N. LEVI, LANGUAGE AND LAW: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC GUIDE TO SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH IN THE U.S.A (American Bar Association, 1994).

JUDITH N. LEVI & ANNE GRAFFAM WALKER, LANGUAGE IN THE JUDICIAL PROCESS (Plenum Press 1990).

GREGORY M. MATOESIAN, LAW AND THE LANGUAGE OF IDENTITY: DISCOURSE IN THE WILLIAM KENNEDY SMITH RAPE TRIAL (Oxford University Press 2001).

ELIZABETH MERTZ, LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTIONS OF DIFFERENCE AND HISTORY IN THE U.S. LAW SCHOOL CLASSROOM (American Bar Foundation 1995).

THOMAS MORAWETZ, LAW AND LANGUAGE (Ashgate/Dartmouth 2000).

DAVID NELKEN, LAW AS COMMUNICATION (Dartmouth 1996).

WILLIAM M. O'BARR, LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE: LANGUAGE, POWER, AND STRATEGY IN THE COURTROOM (Academic Press 1982).

FREDERICK A. PHILBRICK, LANGUAGE AND THE LAW: THE SEMANTICS OF FORENSIC ENGLISH (Macmillan 1949).

SUSAN URMSTON PHILIPS, IDEOLOGY IN THE LANGUAGE OF JUDGES: HOW JUDGES PRACTICE LAW, POLITICS, AND COURTROOM CONTROL (Oxford University Press 1998).

WALTER PROBERT, LAW, LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION (Thomas 1972).

CHRISTINE ROSSINI, ENGLISH AS A LEGAL LANGUAGE (Kluwer Law International 1998).

AUSTIN SARAT & THOMAS R. KEARNS, THE RHETORIC OF LAW (University of Michigan Press 1994).

FREDERICK F. SCHAUER, LAW AND LANGUAGE (Dartmouth 1993).

DAVID M. SKOVER & RONALD K. L. COLLINS, THE DEATH OF DISCOURSE (Westview Press 1996).

LAWRENCE SOLAN, THE LANGUAGE OF JUDGES (University of Chicago Press 1993).

GAIL STYGALL, TRIAL LANGUAGE: DIFFERENTIAL DISCOURSE PROCESSING AND DISCURSIVE FORMATION (J. Benjamins Pub. Co. 1994).

PETER MEIJES TIERSMA, LEGAL LANGUAGE (University of Chicago Press 1999).

G. VAN ROERMUND, LAW, NARRATIVE, AND REALITY:  AN ESSAY IN INTERCEPTING POLITICS (Kluwer Academic 1997).

JAMES BOYD WHITE, THE LEGAL IMAGINATION (University of Chicago Press 1973).

JAMES BOYD WHITE, WHEN WORDS LOSE THEIR MEANING: CONSTITUTIONS AND RECONSTITUTIONS OF LANGUAGE, CHARACTER, AND COMMUNITY (University of Chicago Press 1984).

JAMES BOYD WHITE, HERACLES' BOW: ESSAYS ON THE RHETORIC AND POETICS OF THE LAW (The University of Wisconsin Press 1985).

ARTICLES

Bryna Bogoch, Courtroom Discourse and the Gendered Construction of Professional Identity, 24 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 329 (1999).

Felix Cohen, Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach, 35 COLUM. L. REV. 809 (1935).

Roger Colinvaux, What is Law? A Search for Legal Meaning and Good Judging Under a Textualist Lens, 72 IND. L.J. 1133 (1997).

Clark D. Cunningham, A Linguistic Analysis of the Meanings of "Search" in the Fourth Amendment: A Search for Common Sense, 73 IOWA L. REV. 541 (1988).

Clark D. Cunningham, Legal Storytelling: A Tale Of Two Clients: Thinking About Law As Language, 87 MICH. L. REV. 2459 (1989).

Clark D. Cunningham et. al., Plain Meaning and Hard Cases, 103 YALE L.J. 1561 (1994) (reviewing LAWRENCE M. SOLAN, THE LANGUAGE OF JUDGES (1993)).

Reed Dickerson, Toward a Legal Dialectic, 61 IND. L.J. 315 (1986).

Vivian Grosswald Curran, Deconstruction, Structuralism, Antisemitism and the Law, 36 B.C. L. REV. 1 (1994).

Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic, Scorn, 35 WM. AND MARY L. REV. 1061 (1994).

Frank H. Easterbrook, Text, History, and Structure in Statutory Interpretation, 17 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 61 (1994).

Herbert A. Eastman, Speaking Truth to Power: The Language of Civil Rights Litigators, 104 YALE L.J. 763 (1995).

Kenneth B. Firtel, A Reappraisal of the Intended Audience of Disclosure Under the Securities Act of 1933, 72 S. CAL. L. REV. 851 (1999).

Bernard J. Hibbitts, Making Sense of Metaphors:  Visuality, Aurality, and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse, 16 CARDOZO L. REV. 229 (1994).

Robert A. Hillman, Instinct with an Obligation and the Normative Ambiguity of Rhetorical Power, 56 OHIO ST. L.J. 775 (1995).

Allan C. Hutchinson, From Cultural Construction to Historical Deconstruction, 94 Yale L.J. 209 (1984) (reviewing JAMES BOYD WHITE, WHEN WORDS LOSE THEIR MEANING: CONSTITUTIONS AND RECONSTITUTIONS OF LANGUAGE, CHARACTER, AND COMMUNITY (1984).

Mae Kuykendall, Resistance to Same-Sex Marriage as a Story about Language: Linguistic Failure and the Priority of a Living Language, 34 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 385 (1999).

Gary S. Lawson, Linguistics and Legal Epistemology: Why the Law Pays Less Attention to Linguists Than it Should, 73 WASH. U. L. Q. 995 (1995).

Francis Lieber, On Political Hermeneutics, or on Political Interpretation and Construction, and also on Precedents, 18 AM. JURIST & L. MAG. 37 (1837).

George A. Martinez, The New Wittgensteinians and the End of Jurisprudence, 29 LOY. L.A. L. REV. 545 (1996).

George A. Martinez, Some Thoughts on Law and Interpretation, 50 SMU L. REV. 1651 (1997).

George A. Martinez, Philosophical Considerations and the Use of Narrative in Law, 30 RUTGERS L. J. 683 (1999).

Gary L McDowell, The Language Of Law And The Foundations Of American Constitutionalism, 55 THE WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY 375 (1998).

Michael S. Moore, The Semantics of Judging, 54 S. CAL. L. REV. 151 (1981).

Jeremy Paul, The Politics of Legal Semiotics, 69 TEX. L. REV. 1779 (1991).

Walter Probert, Law and Persuasion: The Language-Behavior of Lawyers, 108 U. PA. L. REV. 35 (1959).

Walter Probert, Torts and Language, 48 FLA. L. REV. 841 (1996).

Irvin C. Rutter, Law, Language, and Thinking Like a Lawyer, 61 U. CIN. L. REV. 1303 (1993).

Austin Sarat, Rhetoric and Remembrance: Trials, Transcription, and the Politics of Critical Reading, 23 LEGAL STUD. FORUM 355 (1999).

R. J. Schoeck, Rhetoric and Law in Sixteenth-Century England, 50 STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY 115 (1953).

Lawrence M. Solan, Judicial Decisions and Linguistic Analysis: Is There a Linguist in the Court?, 73 WASH. U. L. Q. 1069 (1995).

Lawrence M. Solan, Learning Our Limits: The Decline Of Textualism in Statutory Cases, 1997 WIS. L. REV. 235 (1997).

Lawrence M. Solan, Law, Language, and Lenity, 40 WM AND MARY L. REV. 57 (1998).

Lawrence M. Solan, Can the Legal System Use Experts on Meaning?, 66 TENN. L. REV. 1167 (1999).

Lawrence M. Solan, Why Laws Work Pretty Well, but not Great: Words and Rules in Legal Interpretation, 26 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 243 (2001) (reviewing STEVEN PINKER. WORDS AND RULES: THE INGREDIENTS OF LANGUAGE, (1999)).

Christopher D. Stone, From a Language Perspective, 90 YALE L.J. 1149 (1981).

Peter Meijes Tiersma, The Language of Offer and Acceptance: Speech Acts and the Question of Intent, 74 CALIF. L. REV. 189 (1986).

Peter Meijes Tiersma, The Judge as Linguist, 27 LOY. L.A. L. REV. 269 (1993).

Kenneth S. Tollett, Verbalism, Law, and Reality,  37 UNIV. OF DETROIT L. J. 226 (1959).

Gerald B. Wetlaufer, Rhetoric and its Denial in Legal Discourse, 76 VA. L. REV 1545 (1990).

James Boyd White, Law as Rhetoric, Rhetoric as Law: The Arts of Cultural and Communal Life, 52 U. CHI. L. REV 684 (1985).

James Boyd White, Thinking About Our Language, 96 YALE L.J. 1960 (1987).

James Boyd White, Speech: Talking About Religion In The Language Of The Law: Impossible But Necessary, 81 MARQ. L. REV. 177 (1998).
 

II.  Plain Language

BOOKS

MICHELE M. ASPREY, PLAIN LANGUAGE FOR LAWYERS (Federation Press 2nd ed. 1996).

ROBERT C. DICK, LEGAL DRAFTING IN PLAIN LANGUAGE (Carswell 1985).

TIMOTHY ANDREW ORVILLE ENDICOTT, VAGUENESS IN LAW (Oxford University Press 2000).

BRYAN A. GARNER, SECURITIES DISCLOSURE IN PLAIN ENGLISH (CCH Inc. 1999).

BRYAN A. GARNER, LEGAL WRITING IN PLAIN ENGLISH: A TEXT WITH EXERCISES (Univ. of  Chicago Press 2001).

TERRI LECLERCQ, EXPERT LEGAL WRITING (University of Texas Press 1995).

DAVID MELLINKOFF, THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAW (Little, Brown 1963).

DAVID MELLINKOFF, LEGAL WRITING: SENSE & NONSENSE (West Publishing Company 1982).

ERWIN RAY STEINBERG, PLAIN LANGUAGE:  PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE (Wayne State University Press 1991).

CAROL ANN WILSON, PLAIN LANGUAGE PLEADINGS (Prentice Hall 1996).

MARK E. WOJCIK, INTRODUCTION TO LEGAL ENGLISH: AN INTRODUCTION TO LEGAL TERMINOLOGY, REASONING, AND WRITING IN PLAIN ENGLISH (International Law Institute 1998).

ARTICLES

Michael G. Byers, Eschew Obfuscation - The Merits of the SEC's Plain English Doctrine, 31 U. MEM. L. REV. 135 (2000).

Arthur Gilbert, Prof. David Mellinkoff Comes to Our Rescue, Once Again, THE LOS ANGELES DAILY JOURNAL, July 6, 1992, at p. 7.

George D. Gopen, The State of Legal Writing: Res Ipsa Loquitur, 86 MICH. L. REV. 333 (1987).

Thomas G. Kelch, An Apology for Plain-Meaning Interpretation of the Bankruptcy Code, 10 BANK. DEV. J. 289 (1994).

Joseph Kimble, Answering the Critics of Plain Language, 5 SCRIBES J. LEGAL WRITING 51 (1994).

Joseph Kimble, The Great Myth That Plain Language is Not Precise: Just Say No to That Lawyerly Concept of "Why Say Something in Five Words When You Could Say it in 10?," 9 BUSINESS LAW TODAY 48 (2000).

Douglas Litowitz, Legal Writing: Its Nature, Limits, and Dangers, 49 MERCER L. REV. 709 (1998).

Laura E. Little, Hiding with Words: Obfuscation, Avoidance, and Federal Jurisdiction Opinions, 46 UCLA L. REV. 75 (1998).

David Mellinkoff, How to Make Contracts Illegible, 5 STAN. L. REV. 418 (1953).

Dagobert D. Runes, Our Obsolete Legal English, 99 NY LAW JOURNAL 1964 (1938).

Symposium, Plain English (10-Year Anniversary) Theme Issue, 73 MICHIGAN BAR JOURNAL  22 (1994) .

Symposium, Plain English (15-Year Anniversary) Theme Issue, 79 MICHIGAN BAR JOURNAL  27 (2001).
 

III. Legal Usage & Dictionaries

BOOKS

JOHN DUNCAN COWLEY, A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ABRIDGMENT, DIGESTS, DICTIONARIES AND INDEXES OF ENGLISH LAW TO THE YEAR 1800 (Quaritch, for the Shelden Society 1932).

BRYAN A.GARNER, THE ELEMENTS OF LEGAL STYLE (Oxford University Press 1991).

BRYAN A.GARNER, DICTIONARY OF MODERN LEGAL USAGE (Oxford University Press 1995).

DAVID MELLINKOFF, A DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN LEGAL USAGE (West Pub. 1992).

B.J. SOKOL & MARY SOKOL, SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL LANGUAGE: A DICTIONARY (Athlone Press 2000).

ARTICLES

Ellen P. Aprill, The Law of the Word: Dictionary Shopping in the Supreme Court, 30 ARIZ. ST. L.J. 275 (1998).

D.S. Bland, Some Notes on the Evolution of the Legal Dictionary, 1 JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY 75 (1980).

Elizabeth Fajans & Mary R. Falk, Linguistics and the Composition of Legal Documents: Border Crossings, 22 LEGAL STUD. FORUM 697 (1998).

Arthur Allan Leff, The Leff Dictionary of Law:  A Fragment (A-Chiltern hundreds), 94 YALE L J 1855 (1985)

David Mellinkoff, The Myth of Precision and the Law Dictionary, 31 UCLA L. REV. 423 (1983).

Note, Looking It Up: Dictionaries and Statutory Interpretation, 107 HARV. L. REV. 1437 (1994).

A. Raymond Randolph, Dictionaries, Plain Meaning, and Context in Statutory Interpretation, 17 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 71 (1994)

Aaron J. Rynd, Dictionaries and the Interpretation of Words: A Summary of Difficulties, 29 ALBERTA L. REV. 712 (1991).

Lawrence Solan, When Judges Use the Dictionary, 68 AM. SPEECH 50 (1993).

Peter Meijes Tiersma, Dictionaries and Death: Do Capital Jurors Understand Mitigation?, 1995 UTAH L. REV. 1 (1995).

Samuel A. Thumma & Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier, The Lexicon Has Become a Fortress: The United States Supreme Court's Use of Dictionaries, 47 BUFF. L. REV. 227 (1999).

James L. Weis, Comment, Jurisprudence by Webster's: The Role of the Dictionary in Legal Thought, 39 MERCER L. REV. 961 (1988).

Mary Whisner, Bouvier's, Black's, and Tinkerbell, 92 LAW LIBR. J. 99 (2000).