The Promise of Legal Semiotics

The Promise of Legal Semiotics

Legal Promise and Psychological Contract

This Essay argues that the “psychological contract”—the parties’ respective, subjective, idiosyncratic understandings of their contractual obligations to one another—is important and predictable. The common law of contract tells us how to discern the legal promise. By contrast, the “psychological contract” describes how the parties themselves understand their agreements, an inquiry that refers ...

Transparency, Control and Power in Legal Semiotics: Contexts and Issues

Legal discourse is different from most other professional discourses, in that the nature and context of its interpretation, whether spoken or written, is very often different from those of other discourse contexts. Whereas in most professional and disciplinary contexts interpretation of discourse is largely hearer or reader based, in that there is some freedom for variable interpretations, of c...

Covenant, Promise, and the Gift of Time

If we categorize religions according to whether they give greater prominence to time or to space, the role of “promise” marks a religion of covenant as clearly a religion of time. Yet the future is unknowable and can only be present to us as a field of possibilities. How far do these possibilities extend? The question directs us back to the nature of time, a question that became concealed in th...

SEMIOTICS, ANALOGICAL LEGAL REASONING, AND THE Cf. CITATION: GETTING OUR SIGNALS UNCROSSED

The Bluebook’s introductory citation signals are essential to effective legal discourse. The choice of signal can influence not only the interpretation of cited cases, but also the path of the law. In this Article, Professor Ira Robbins examines one commonly used signal: the cf. After exploring its semiotic function, he details the multitude of ways in which this signal has been used and misuse...