Law at the End of the Day

Larry Catá Backer's comments on current issues in transnational law and policy. These essays focus on the constitution of regulatory communities (political, economic, and religious) as they manage their constituencies and the conflicts between them. The context is globalization. This is an academic field-free zone: expect to travel "without documents" through the sometimes strongly guarded boundaries of international relations, constitutional, international, comparative, and corporate law.

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Just Published: (Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek (eds)) Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics (Edward Elgar, 2023)

I am delighted to pass along the announcement of the publication of (Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek (eds)) Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics (Edward Elgar, 2023).

This comprehensive Research Handbook explores the wide variety of work conducted in legal semiotics to provide a broad understanding of how the law works through signs and symbols. Demonstrating that law is a strategical system of fluctuating signs, contributors critically analyse the ever-evolving conceptualisations of law and legal discourse.

Contributors include: José Manuel Aroso Linhares, Larry Catá Backer, Kristian Bankov, Martin Belov, Patrícia Branco, John Brigham, Angela Condello, Marcel Danesi, Clara Chapdelaine-Feliciati, Peter Goodrich, Dariusz J. Gwiazdowicz, Nathalie Hauksson-Tresch, Paolo Heritier, Parineet Kaur, Miklós Könczöl, Anita Lam, Magdalena Łągiewska, Sarah Marusek, Aleksandra Matulewska, Rostam J. Neuwirth, Ahmad Pakatchi, Frank S. Ravitch, Mario Ricca, Elisabeth Roy Trudel, Michael Salter, Julia J.A. Shaw, Anita Soboleva, Amy Swiffen, Robbie Sykes, Mark Thomas, Kieran Tranter, Farid Samir Benavides Vanegas, Guilherme Vasconcelos Vilaça, Anne Wagner, Bartosz Wojciechowski, Youping Xu, Wei Yu, Kamil Zeidler, Marek Zirk-Sadowski.

Some colleagues have provided much appreciated endorsement:

‘This volume is an interdisciplinary tour de force. Scholars from around the world insightfully explore diverse signs and symbols of law. For those seeking to understand law in the evolving fullness of lived experience (including its cognitive, affective, social, cultural, and political dimensions) here is the place to begin.’ -- Richard K. Sherwin, New York Law School, US

‘This book provides new legal semiotics on the one hand, and fields of a deepened and revisited understanding of rules in law and legal thought formation on the other. It distances itself from traditional ideas, inviting the reader to wander in new dimensions of space, images and perspectives which were hitherto unknown in legal research.’ -- Jan M. Broekman, KU Leuven, Belgium

‘Law has not only a language but also a semiotics, a system of signs, texts and meanings that seek to bring order to the relationships among human beings. Never before this volume has an attempt been made to provide an all-encompassing tool for the study of such a system. Anyone working within the perimeter of linguistic, semiotic, and social studies of law will find this volume a distinctly useful starting point and reference.’ -- Massimo Leone, University of Turin, Italy

The Table of Contents (with links to some of the open access materials), along with the text (also open access) of Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek's brilliant "Introduction: law as a strategical system of fluctuating signs" follows below. Contributor bios may be accessed here. The submission draft of my own contribution, "Legal Semiotics, Globalization and Governance," may be accessed here.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Front Matter

Free access Copyright Download PDF

Free access Contents Download PDF

Free access Contributors Download PDF

Free access Foreword John Brigham Download PDF

Free access Preface Download PDF

Free access Acknowledgements Download PDF

* * *

Introduction: law as a strategical system of
fluctuating signs
Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek

I.1 EVOLVING IN THE SPACE OF LEGAL SIGNS

If we examine the role of legal semiotics, we find that not only concepts bearing legal sig-
nificance must be taken into account, but also signs constituted by experience, feelings, and
emotions. In other words, the language of the law reflects evolving habits and social norms in
everyday spaces. In this way, the language of law is a phenomenon of daily life that fluctuates
over time and adapts itself to a variety of situations.

The life of the […] law has not been logic: it has been experience. […] The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.1

As the symbolic meaning that gives life to the language of law, legal semiotics evolves in
response to new social experiences. Through these experiences, the field of legal semiotics
initiates understandings about law and exercises control over the concept and practice of regu-
lation. Two key elements of legal semiotics, of equal weight, provide greater insight into why
legal semiotics should be employed. These two facets consist of two intrinsically intercon-
nected and vital components: law’s verbal and non-verbal sign systems. By mastering these
two semiotic patterns, we may overcome the shortcomings of conventional communication
theory since the legal semiotics approach incorporates the unsaid occurrence, specifying and
objectivizing it in a space that regulates a determined segment of humanity at a given time:

all human societies have developed complex systems of both verbal and non-verbal systems which are not static but which evolve continuously with and to represent changing social norms and the evolving, growing social consciousness of any given community. 2

Although the language of the law is firmly rooted in legal tradition, culture, and practice, 3
it is culturally contextualized. As a code that requires a common core of knowledge within
one community or the intersection of multiple communities, the legal system of signs is the
foundation for this knowledge to the extent that these communities of legal spaces incorporate
non-legal visual sign systems. They go further in the direction of a socialization of discourse,
and, as such, constitute a unique field of research. As offered by the many compelling chapters

1 Holmes, The Common Law (1881), 1.
2 Kevelson, The Law as a System of Signs (1988), 4.
3 See Mattila, Comparative Legal Linguistics: Language of Law, Latin, Modern Lingua Francas
(2013); Kevelson, “Comparative Legal Cultures”, American Journal of Semiotics, 1 (1982): 63–84.

in our Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics, legal semiotics offers us a way to grasp, see,
and embody these unique dimensions.

Through the semiotic approach, sign-based processes shape the way thoughts and judg-
ments can evolve in distinct ways. This system of fluctuating signs becomes a strategy, allow-
ing for reorganization as decisions, beliefs, and more contemporary notions and concepts
evolve.4 Accordingly, adjustments occur with regard to this strategic system of fluctuating
signs firmly embedded in time and space. 5 Law is then a “site of imbrication of several lan-
guages of expression”.6 Peirce presupposes that legal systems of signs are a real echo of the
society in which we live.7 Hence, the development of legal reasoning is subject to how the
meaning of these strategical systems of signs is construed, imparted, and debated. As such,
the open texture 8 of law constitutes its logical postulate in a world where meaning is not fixed
but is in perpetual flux,9 and is subject to methodological relations.10 Such strategic openness
facilitates re-interpretation and the readjustment of values and meanings and becomes a key
feature for positive law requiring an “energetic interpretant”,11 since

the meaning of a representation can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is nothing but the representation itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant clothing. But this clothing never can be completely stripped off, it is only changed for something more diaphanous. So there is an infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. So, another infinite series.12

Deconstructing signs and sign systems in legal semiotics demonstrates that legal and social
systems are in constant mutation and perpetual (de-/re-)construction. Each new detection of
a sign (i.e., its interpretation) participates in a permanent flux regarding the logics of the law.
These scalable processes demonstrate that law is firmly embedded in a fluctuating mode of
reasoning, having common attributes with respect to the legal reasoning activity, while incor-
porating nuances that extend its argumentation into other space-times. For that reason, inves-
tigations into the law are meticulous, elaborated in successive moments, although bearing in
mind all the interferences of the society, culture, and history of the period under scrutiny. So,
this dynamicity amplifies the complex nature of the law, since these parameters could hamper
and/or stimulate the strategic system of fluctuating signs.13

Recognizing that legal semiotics is a very complex, elaborate, and rich field of study has
allowed our contributors to the Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics to identify the triadic
dimension of law as a strategic system of fluctuating signs. The deep plane characterizes

4 Mattila, Comparative Legal Linguistics: Language of Law, Latin, Modern Lingua Francas (2013);
Gémar, La quête de l’expression optimale du droit: le langage du droit à l’épreuve du texte. Essai de jurilinguistique (forthcoming).
5 Wagner and Matulewska (eds), Research Handbook on Jurilingusitics (2023).
6 Barthes, Le degré zéro de l’écriture (1953), 56.
7 Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931–1966), vol. 4, 127.
8 Hart, The Concept of Law (1961).
9 Wagner, Marusek, and Matulewska, “Perpetual Pendulum in Law”, in Wagner and Matulewska (eds), Research Handbook on Jurilinguistics (2023).
10 Kevelson, “Time as Method in Charles S. Peirce”, American Journal of Semiotics, 2 (1983): 267–276.
11 Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1995), 194.
12 Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931–1966), vol. 1, 339.
13 Mackaay (ed), Les incertitudes du droit, Uncertainty and the Law (1998).

abstract structures that can explain a narrative through space and time, showing that our
thoughts, wishes, fears, hopes, and desires are interrelated.14 In Part I: Legal Semiotics as an
Arena of Thoughts, the morphosyntactic layer reveals the specific cultural and societal pat-
terns in use in law worldwide. Part II: Culture-bound Legal Semiotics, the Backbone of the
Law connects or contrasts visual sign systems with the language of the law at the figurative
level, explored further in Part III: Visual Legal Semiotics as a Figurative Sign System. The
larger purpose of the volume is to show the range of legal semiotics through the experiences
of three different types of causation in law.15 In the course of context analysis, namely pre-
determination (the law in its written form), codetermination (the law in its interpreted form),
and overdetermination (the subjective content of law),16 contributing authors will elaborate
further on the meaning of signs and symbols that contextually inform law. Mariana Valverde,
in referencing Wittgenstein, speaks to this richness when she writes:

“meaning does not inhere in words: it comes into existence within the particular social
context in which words are used”.17

Whether words, signs, and/or symbols, the range of law in everyday life is visual and
embodied. The textuality of law reveals and informs the social, legal, political, and cultural
contexts of phenomenological knowledge and meaning.18 Law is visually enlivened through
myriad symbols and non-verbal cues and meanings.

I.2 LEGAL SEMIOTICS AS AN AREA OF COMMUNICATION FOR
LEGAL THOUGHTS

Legal semiotics can be conceived as an arena of communication in which legal thought
unfolds. Hence, three subjects can be identified: a sign, its object, and its interpreter; however,
these subjects can themselves be differentiated into five consecutive layers to facilitate a bet-
ter grasp: 1 – the anchoring of objects and predicates in primary notions linked to cultural
pre-constructs; 2 – the incremental elaboration of objects; 3 – the assertion of objects by
predicates; 4 – the assumption of responsibility for these determinations by an enunciator; and
5 – the interpretation of the different configurations. Such a perspective on legal argumenta-
tion illustrates how challenging are the techniques of legal expression and philosophical rea-
soning in law. For this reason, our contributors to the Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics
question the ways in which these mechanisms of legal reasoning over signs and sign systems
are constituted and consumed.

Indeed, legal reasoning as such is strongly conditioned by manifold factors that incorporate
the mechanisms of thought arising from linguistics, sociology, psychology, and history alike,
all of which can influence the way we think about the law as well as its multiple applications.19

14 Sebeok, “The Doctrine of Signs”, in Deely, Williams, and Kruse (eds), Frontiers in Semiotics (1986).
15 Kevelson, “Causation in Law: A Semiotics Perspective”, in Landowski and Carzo (eds), Proceedings Colloque International de Semiotique Juridique (1985).
16 Armgardt, Causation in Law, Overdetermination and Normative Ideal Worlds (2019).
17 Valverde, Law’s Dream of a Common Knowledge (2003), 6.
18 Broekman and Backer, “Reading Semiotics”, in Signs in Law – A Source Book: The Semiotics of Law in Legal Education III (2015), 6.
19 See also Wagner and Matulewska (eds), Research Handbook on Jurilinguistics (2023).

Thereby, a definition of an inter-related process of reference concerning these sign systems is
unattainable without any context. Accordingly, only an interpretation of the targeted sign sys-
tem provides clarity through argumentative and action-oriented mechanisms. The prevailing
legal language of a country is, therefore, a knowledgable and intricate amalgam of intrinsic
and extrinsic influences, stemming from cultural practices operating in distinct spaces and
times modernized by the perpetual evolution of its external relations. As such, the arena of
communication of thoughts is a constant, creative, and innovative legal construct across its
cultural legacy. Building legal reasoning with novel ideas presupposes their approval and
justification sine qua non by previous legal thoughts. As developed by our contributors to the
Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics in their respective chapters, it seems vital to inves-
tigate the logic of inquiry, noting that the law is like a perpetual pendulum in space-time, 20
since:

it must be conceded that the system of law, as a whole, is unstable and this instability is desirable. What should be apparent here is that legal reasoning, from the realists’ point of view, if it is faithful to its pragmatic ground, must violate the traditional laws of contradiction, that is, a legal system in the process of Becoming rather than one which is at least, ideally, existent and in place. 21

Therefore, the intentionality of fluctuating signs “creates something in the mind of the
interpreter”, 22 which then needs to be construed.23 In deciphering the signification of signs, we
may refer to Morris describing their triadic dimension, being of designative, appraisive, and
prescriptive signs.24 Besides, as Jacques Chaban-Delmas once declared in his speech before
the French Assembly in 1971:

for a society to safeguard both individual and public freedoms, it requires the acceptance of the rules of the game and the compliance with these rules […] No society can survive without these rules. In a free society, this rule is known as the Law [our translation]. 25

So, with freedom, many locks and doors remain in place to encapsulate the act of performa-
tive power exercised by the law. The law simultaneously denotes possibilities for action, for
restriction in its interpretation. This flexibility is a key element in the communication arena
and, with concrete case studies, gives our various contributors to the Research Handbook on
Legal Semiotics the opportunity to identify avenues of interpretations, formulate hypotheses,
and explore alternatives. The law is never a finite construct but rather demands both concep-
tual precision and in-depth analyses to fully appreciate the art of legal semiotics as an arena
of communication for legal thoughts.

Accordingly, the signs of legal communication are manifested in the visual representation
of legal meaning. Whether as objects that impart understanding of place or procedure, or as

20 Wagner, Marusek and Matulewska, “Perpetual Pendulum in Law”, in Wagner and Matulewska (eds), Research Handbook on Jurilinguistics (2023).
21 Kevelson “Semiotics and Methods of Legal Inquiry: Interpretation and Discovery in Law from the Perspective of Peirce’s Speculative Rhetoric”, Indiana Law Journal, 61 (1986): 315, 362.
22 Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931–1966), vol. 8, 179.
23 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984), 46.
24 Morris, Writings on the General Theory of Signs (1971), 141.
25 20 April 1971: https://archives.assemblee-nationale.fr/4/cri/1970-1971-ordinaire2/009.pdf (accessed on 13 February 2023).

processes that direct form or behavior, the materiality of legal communication is visual, under-
stood, and disputed through semiotic channels. As words, objects, or colors, the law is invoked
through the depiction of symbols and signs. Hence, the semiotic coding of societal order and
its demonstrated array of behaviors and expectations facilitates increased legal communica-
tion and multiple manners of legal comprehension. The visual is, as Giddens points out, the
interaction of word and image or the limits of text with respect to different ways of knowing, both
of which are important considerations for law and legal theory with respect to their rational and
textual limits. 26

Therefore, if we can see how the law works through its visual forms of communication, then
we are seeing the law itself. If we can see the law, then we are also witnessing culture, for the
backbone of the law is the visually evocative culture-bound legal semiotics, as the next section
will develop further.

I.3 CULTURE-BOUND LEGAL SEMIOTICS, THE BACKBONE OF
THE LAW

Legal semiotics contributes to the constitution of a collective memory by applying meticulous
and refined methods of investigation to law. Nevertheless, the complexity and multiplicity of
signs and sign systems represent an equally important challenge. Interpretive methodologies
that examine multiple aspects of an embedded legal culture27 are critical to addressing these
complexities. As a result, the structural variations in words, signs, and/or symbols are the core
of our study of legal semiotics. In other words, if legal semiotics typifies the flexibility of law,
then we can see that the meaning of a sentence is more than just the words constituting it.
Gény 28 argues that, in practice, it is a matter of putting rules of law in motion, and in a way
moving them from performative power to action. While retaining its flexible nature and a pro-
spective adaptation to real-life experiences (i.e., to specific needs), its flow is ceaseless amidst
an ever-evolving legal system. The rules of law in motion are embodied by such signs that are
themselves open to a continuum of flow over time. Where general principles are established,
space for flux between already-existing interpretative models is provided. Following from
Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome theory, 29 as these flows encounter obstacles, they bypass them
or create new lines to prevent a discontinuity of meaning and so allow for the emergence of
new structures of signification. Such is the direction taken by our contributors in their respec-
tive case analyses for the Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics.

We would assert that research on legal semiotics is the backbone of the law, since both
researchers and practitioners rely heavily on the Common Law or Civil Law sign systems in

26 Giddens, “Comics, Law, and Aesthetics”, Law and Humanities (2012), 87.
27 See further Marian Valverde’s Law’s Dream of a Common Knowledge (2003); Jurisdiction by Shaunnagh Dorsett and Shaun McVeigh (2012); Spatial Justice: Body, Lawscape, Atmosphere by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (2015); and Street-Level Sovereignty: The Intersection of Space and Law (2017).
28 Gény, Méthodes d’interprétation et sources en droit privé positif: Essai critique (1922), vol. 1, 96–110.
29 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987), 18–71.

their interpretive approaches that reflect and engage with their respective cultures and com-
munities. Indeed, the Common Law is a complex sign system of unwritten law grounded in
judicial precedents in a determined space-time. For example, the US Common Law system
traces its historical legacy back to the colonial tradition but now seeks to establish links in its
contemporary legal history and cultural theory. Such also is the case with Civil Law, which
has adapted to current circumstances over time and in space once bounded by history. This
multifaceted reality is also evidenced by Sherry when stating that:

the globalization of culture means that we all live in “translated” worlds, that the spaces of knowledge we inhabit assemble ideas and style of multiple origins, that transnational communications and frequent migrations make every cultural site a crossroads and a meeting place.

So, no matter the contextual or temporal approach, the law and the language of the law are
inextricably interwoven with the laws and languages of other countries, cultures, legal tradi-
tions, and other time periods. Sir Francis Bacon accounted for the cross-cultural roots of the
Laws of England as a deep and complex construction, sometimes beyond recognition, 30 also
exposed by Peter Goodrich for other legal sign systems, when declaring that:

In law in particular the problem was extreme by virtue of its multilingual and archaic forms, by virtue of its Saxon, Nordic, Norman, Latin and middle English vocabularies. 31

As such, the research of many academics and legal practitioners worldwide demonstrates the
powerful bonds that were created through the complex elaboration of laws. This research
reflects the histories and many conquests of law and land over the centuries. Marks from the
past still exist prominently in law, while being nurtured and expanded to incorporate further
significations arising from different cultures. Such historical roots shape the uniqueness of
legal discourses worldwide, allowing laws to grow and mature over time. This is how Gény
speaks of law that is “constructed by a series of artifices in which man’s ingenuity deploys all
its fertile power” 32 and that our contributors to the Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics
address in a very clear manner.

Nevertheless, legal semiotics not only considers the links to history as a unifier sign for a
given legal identity but also new forms of communication that penetrate the law even more,
challenging and compelling it to address additional issues, namely cultural ones. Although
Hall was not referring to social networks, these fast and innovative modes of communication,
his stance on culture is still obvious nowadays, even with new technologies:

Culture acts directly and profoundly on behavior and the mechanisms that link one to the other are often unconscious, beyond the voluntary control of the individual. 33

30 See Mellinkoff, The Language of the Law (1963), 150–180.
31 Goodrich, Languagess of Law: From Logics of Memory to Nomadic Masks (1990), 27.
32 We use Gény’s ideas and adapted it with our translation. See Gény, Méthodes d’interprétation et sources en droit privé positif: Essai critique (1922), vol. 3, 148.
33 This is our translation from the work of Hall, Le langage silencieux (1984), 48.

As we extend our reflection on the use of new technologies and their new visual signs/symbols
of communication, we can point out that emotions become performative acts too.34 As under-
lined by Wittgenstein with respect to performative acts, 35 these contemporary performative
emotional signs/symbols in a written text can draw the (un)intentional contours that such acts
can trigger on others.36 Thus, the cognitive aspect of an emotionally loaded writing is the
source of some positive or negative law-related effects, such as friendship or hatred on social
networks.37

I.4 VISUAL LEGAL SEMIOTICS AS A FIGURATIVE SIGN SYSTEM

Sign systems abound in our daily lives. Signs and symbols show us law and legal frameworks
of belonging and not belonging. Around the world, we inhabit a variety of cultural lenses
through which to interpret sign systems about the law and as a result adapt law’s meaning to
our daily inhabited spaces. Popular culture, academic subjects, professional arenas, shopping
markets, public transportation, and other aspects of life impart not only what has been vested
in courtrooms, but those aspects of the law practiced and contested by social spheres. How we
interact with one another is framed through the law insofar as relations, behaviors, responses,
and reactions to social stigma become legalized through social discipline, legal penalty, and
communication that may develop further. Everyday structures, objects, and materialized
forms of meaning depict structures of power and positionalities that support the multi-layered
legalized constructs of daily life made visible through non-verbal signs and symbols.

What we see is, of course, interpreted through various lenses informed by cultural posi-
tionalities, political opinions, social points of inclusion or exclusion, historical interpretations,
and narrative disagreements. Similarly, our contemporary digestion of social norms upholds,
questions, or rejects status quo banalities about what the law is and how far it reaches into
our lives. As demonstrated through the dynamic dimensionalities explored in the chapters of
our Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics, the visuality of legal semiotics imparts meaning
beyond the specific sign or symbol that creates and sustains a meaning that can be seen,
even as it may be contested as to whether or not it exhibits the “truth” of being seen. This
contextualized reception of what is seen enlivens the understanding and implementation of
the law through the visual legal semiotics as a figurative sign system that is acknowledged,
respected, as well as disputed, even as it literally does nothing, says nothing. Yet, even as we
know that seeing is not always believing, the visual legal semiotics imparts a particular type

34 See Wagner and Yu, “Machiavellian Apparatus of Cyberbullying: Its Triggers Igniting Fury with Legal Impacts”, Int J Semiot Law 34 (2021): 945–963; Danesi, “The Law and Emojis: Emoji Forensics”, Int J Semiot Law, 34/4 (2021); Wagner, Marusek and Yu, “Getting Far Too Emotional with Emojis: The Digital Influencers in E-Discourse Aggressiveness”, Social Semiotics, 30/3, Special Issue (2020).
35 See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1958).
36 See Youping and Trzaskawka, “Cyberbullying, Language and Law”, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 34/4, Special Issue (2021).
37 See Machangama and Alkiviadou, “Free Speech vs. Hate Speech”, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 35/6 (2022); Wagner and Marusek, “Rumors on the Net: A Brackish Suspension of Speech and Hate”, in Law, Culture and the Humanities (2019).

of conceptualized knowledge about law and legality that is transmutable as an interpretive fact
influenced by the see-er:

is made and communicated in more ways than people are aware of. In these same subtle ways, power relations, although largely invisible and intangible, are constructed and consolidated through our daily interaction with people, objects and events. 38

Even as we know that “seeing is not always believing”, the act of seeing conveys a visual sense
of how life is structured throughout the social sphere. Law helps to create and fortify that
structure as the law is made visible through the non-verbal legal semiotic.

I.5 CONCLUSION

Through this volume, Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics, Anne Wagner and Sarah
Marusek wish to help readers see the law in its material everyday forms. These forms comprise
the rich array of non-verbal legal semiotics that carry cultural meaning and interpretations
of the law vested in conceptualizations, understandings, and practices of power, order, and
authority. The variety of legal semiotics in chapters from contributors, who write from around
the globe, provides the reader with a broad understanding of how the law works through signs
and symbols. Even though we are so different, we share many common axes when considering
how the law is represented culturally through the material form of the legal semiotic.

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About this Site:

At the end of the day, law?

. . . . Emperors and kings

Are but obeyed in their several provinces,

Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds;

But his domain that exceeds in this

Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man.

A sound magician is a mighty god.

* * *

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough,

That sometimes grew within this learned man.

Faustus is gone; regard his hellish fall,

Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise

Only to wonder at unlawful things,

Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits

To practise more than heavenly power permits.

Christopher Marlowe, "Dr. Faustus" (before 1593)

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All essays are (c) Larry Catá Backer except where otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
The essays may be cited and quoted with appropriate reference. Suggested reference as follows:
Larry Catá Backer, [Essay Title], Law at the End of the Day, ([Essay Posting Date]) available at [http address].

The author holds a faculty appointment at Pennsylvania State University. Notice is hereby given that irrespective of that appointment, this blog serves as a purely personal enterprise created to serve as an independent site focusing on issues of general concern to the public. The views and opinions expressed here are those of its author. This site is neither affiliated with nor does it in any way state, reflect, or represent the views of Pennsylvania State University or any of its entities, units or affiliates.

Globalization Law and Policy Series from Ashgate Publishing

About the Series:

Globalization: Law and Policy will include an integrated body
of scholarship that critically addresses key issues and theoretical debates in comparative and transnational law. Volumes in the series will focus on the consequential effects of globalization, including emerging frameworks and processes for the internationalization, legal harmonization, juridification and democratization of law among increasingly connected political, economic, religious, cultural, ethnic and other functionally differentiated governance communities. This series is intended as a resource for scholars, students, policy makers and civil society actors, and will include a balance of theoretical and policy studies in single-authored volumes and collections of original essays.

An interview with the Series Editor

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Larry Catá Backer
W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar
and Professor of Law, Professor of International Affairs
Pennsylvania State University
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or

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