Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:09:59.776Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Change of style, change of mind: lawyers’ writing manners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2019

Alexandra Mercescu
Alexandra Mercescu*
Affiliation:
Research Assistant, Faculty of Law, West University of Timișoara
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between style and epistemology as regards the discipline of law – especially in the Romanistic tradition – and, more specifically, its resistance to interdisciplinarity. Drawing on literary theory and discourse analysis literature, the first part of this paper examines the notion of ‘style’ in relation to academic disciplines. It argues that the variety of writing styles reflects the various epistemologies underlying the different disciplinary discourses and makes interdisciplinarity difficult to implement in general. The second part of this study borrows Roland Barthes's distinction between ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts in order to show that lawyers’ writing manners hinder the ability of law to connect with other disciplines. Against the background of the two sections, this contribution will finally include a discussion on what could be done to enhance law(yers)’s capability for interdisciplinary thinking, concluding that style might be not so insignificant a place to start with.

Keywords

legal epistemologyliterary theorydiscourse analysisinterdisciplinaritystylecivil-law tradition
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 15 , Special Issue 3: The Many Faces of ‘Style’ in Law and Legal Scholarship , September 2019 , pp. 310 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arrivé, M (1994) Lacan sur le style, sur le style de Lacan [Lacan on style, on Lacan's style]. In Molinié, G and Cahné, P (eds), Qu'est-ce que le style? [What Is Style?]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 45–63.Google Scholar
Bailleux, A and Ost, F (2013) Droit, contexte et interdisciplinarité: refondation d'une démarche [Law, context and interdisciplinarity: refoundation of an enterprise]. Revue interdisciplinaire d’études juridiques 70, 25–44.Google Scholar
Balkin, J (1996) Interdisciplinarity as colonization. Washington and Lee Law Review 53, 949–970.Google Scholar
Barthes, R (1970) S/Z. Paris: Le Seuil.Google Scholar
Barthes, R (1973) Le Plaisir du Texte [The Pleasure of the Text]. Paris: Le Seuil.Google Scholar
Bercea, R (2014) Legal translation and legal interpretation: the epistemological gap. The Translator 20, 273–290.Google Scholar
Bhatia, V (2004) Worlds of Written Discourse. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Biber, D and Gray, B (2011) The historical shift of scientific academic prose in English towards less explicit styles of expression: writing without verbs. In Bhatia, V, Sánchez Hernández, P and Pérez-Paredes, P (eds), Researching Specialized Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 11–25.Google Scholar
Birks, P (1996) Editor's preface. In Birks, P (ed.), Pressing Problems in the Law, Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bordas, E (2008) ‘Style’: Un Mot et des Discours [‘Style’: A Word and Discourses]. Paris: Éditions Kimé.Google Scholar
Boyd, White J (1990) Justice as Translation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Candlin, C, Bhatia, V and Christian, J (2002) Must the worlds collide? Professional and academic discourses in the study and practice of law. In Cortese, G and Riley, P (eds), Domain Specific English: Textual Practices Across Communities and Classrooms. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 101–114.Google Scholar
Cercel, C (2016) Law out of bounds: legal picnolepsy, intellectual austerity, and Romania's legal past. In Mańko, R, Cercel, C and Sulikowski, A (eds), Law and Critique in Central Europe. Oxford: Counterpress, pp. 44–60.Google Scholar
Combe, D (1991) La Pensée et le Style [Thinking and Style]. Paris: Éditions Universitaires.Google Scholar
Combe, D (1994) Pensée et langage dans le style [Thinking and language in style]. In Molinié, G and Cahné, P (eds), Qu'est-ce que le style? [What Is Style?]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 71–93.Google Scholar
Compagnon, A (1997) Chassez le style par la porte, il rentrera par la fenêtre [Chase style out the door, it will keep coming back through the window]. Littérature 105, 5–13.Google Scholar
Conseil d’État de la Belgique (2008) Principes de Technique Législative. Available at www.raadvst-consetat.be/?action=doc&doc=771 (accessed 20 March 2019).Google Scholar
Cornu, G (2005) Linguistique juridique [Legal Linguistics], 3d edn. Paris: Montchrestien.Google Scholar
Cotterrell, R (1998) Why must legal ideas be interpreted sociologically? Journal of Law and Society 25, 171–192.Google Scholar
Cserne, P (2015) Formalism in judicial reasoning: is Central and Eastern Europe a special case? In Bobek, M (ed.), Central European Judges under the European Influence: The Transformative Power of the EU Revisited. Oxford: Hart, pp. 23–42.Google Scholar
Curtin, DW (ed.) (1980) The Aesthetic Dimension of Science. New York: Philosophical Library.Google Scholar
Dahl, T (2004) Textual metadiscourse in research articles: a marker of national culture or of academic discipline? Journal of Pragmatics 36, 1807–1825.Google Scholar
Del Lungo, A (2016) Éloge du lisible (S/Z) [Eulogy to the readerly]. Carnets 6, 1–8, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.4000/carnets.815 (accessed 7 May 2019).Google Scholar
Dyevre, A (2016) Fixing Europe's law schools. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2833908 (accessed 20 March 2019).Google Scholar
Feldman, S (2004) The transformation of an academic discipline: law professors in the past and future (or Toy Story too). Journal of Legal Education 54, 471–498.Google Scholar
Fleck, L (1935/2008) Genèse et Développement d'un Fait Scientifique [Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact]. Jas, N (trans.). Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Frodeman, R, Thompson Klein, J and Pacheco, R (eds) (2017) The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Garner, B (1988) On legal style, ABA Journal, 1 October, pp. 104–106.Google Scholar
Goodrich, P (2000) Law-induced anxiety: legists, anti-lawyers and the boredom of legality. Social and Legal Studies 9, 143–163.Google Scholar
Gotti, M (2012) Variation in academic texts. In Gotti, M (ed.), Academic Identity Traits: A Corpus-based Investigation. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 23–42.Google Scholar
Granger, GG (1968/1988) Essai d'une Philosophie du Style [Essay on a Philosophy of Style]. Paris: Odile Jacob.Google Scholar
Grzegorczyk, C (1986) L'impact de la théorie des actes de langage dans le monde juridique : essai de bilan [The impact of speech act theory in the legal world: tentative overview]. In Amselek, P (ed.), Théorie des Actes de Langage, Éthique et Droit [Theory of Speech Acts, Ethics and Law]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 169–196.Google Scholar
Hacking, I (1992) ‘Style’ for historians and philosophers. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 23, 1–20.Google Scholar
Hudson, K (1979) The Jargon of the Professions. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Humboldt, W von (1836/1999) On Language. Heath, P (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hyland, K (2002) Options of identity in academic writing. English Language Teaching Journal 56, 351–358.Google Scholar
Hyland, K (2004) Disciplinary Discourses. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Hyland, K and Bondi, M (eds) (2006) Academic Discourse across Disciplines. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Jamin, C (2012) La Cuisine du Droit [Law's Cuisine]. Paris: L.G.D.J.Google Scholar
Kaplan, R (1966) Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education. Language Learning 16, 1–20.Google Scholar
Klein, J (1990) Interdisciplinarity [:] History, Theory, & Practice. Detroit: Wayne State University.Google Scholar
Lamont, M (2009) How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Laurent, J (2000) Du style comme pratique [On style as practice]. Littérature 118, 98–117.Google Scholar
Legrand, P (2003) Perspectives du dehors sur le civilisme français [An outsider's perspective on French civilisme]. In Kasirer, N (ed.), Le droit civil, avant tout un style? [Civil Law: A Style, Before Everything Else?]. Montréal: Thémis, pp. 153–183.Google Scholar
Legrand, P (2008) Word/world (of primordial issues for comparative legal studies. In Petersen, H et al. (eds), Paradoxes of European Legal Integration. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 185–233.Google Scholar
Legrand, P (2017) Jameses at play: a tractation on the comparison of laws. The American Journal of Comparative Law 65, 1–132.Google Scholar
Legrand, P and Samuel, G (2005) Brèves épistémologiques sur le droit anglais tel qu'en lui-même [Epistemological briefs on English law in and of itself]. Revue interdisciplinaire d’études juridiques 54, 1–62.Google Scholar
Mańko, R (2013) Weeds in the garden of justice: the survival of positivism in Polish legal culture as a symptom/sinthome. Pólemos – Journal of Law, Literature and Culture 7, 207–233.Google Scholar
Mańko, R, Cercel, C and Sulikowski, A (eds) (2016) Law and Critique in Central Europe. Oxford: Counterpress.Google Scholar
Martin, R (1994) Préliminaire [Preliminaries]. In Molinié, G and Cahné, P (eds), Qu'est-ce que le style ? [What Is Style?]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 9–15.Google Scholar
Mattila, H (2013) Comparative Legal Linguistics, 2nd edn. Goddard, C (trans.). Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M (1960/2001) Signes [Signs]. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M (1969/1992) La Prose du Monde [The Prose of the World]. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Minkkinen, P (2009) The legal academic of Max Weber's tragic modernity. Social and Legal Studies 19, 165–182.Google Scholar
Mitchell, WJT (1977) Style as epistemology: Blake and the movement towards abstraction in Romantic art. Studies in Romanticism 16, 145–164.Google Scholar
Molino, J (1994) Pour une théorie sémiologique du style [For a semiological theory of style]. In Molinié, G and Cahné, P (eds), Qu'est-ce que le style ? [What Is Style?]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 213–263.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M (2003) Cultivating humanity in legal education. University of Chicago Law Review 70, 265–279.Google Scholar
Orrell, D (2012) Truth or Beauty: Science and the Quest for Order. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Orta, I (2010) A genre-based view of judgements of appellate courts in the common law system: intersubjective positioning, intertextuality and interdiscursivity in the reasoning of judges. In Gotti, M and Williams, C (eds), Legal Discourses across Languages and Cultures. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 263–285.Google Scholar
Ost, F and van de Kerchove, M (2002) De la pyramide au réseau ? Pour une théorie dialectique du droit [From the Pyramid to the Network? For a Dialectical Theory of Law]. Bruxelles: Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis.Google Scholar
Pattison, J (1977) Atavism, relevancy, and the hermit: the law school today. Journal of Legal Education 29, 62–65.Google Scholar
Pieters, R and Baumgartner, H (2002) Who talks to whom? Intra- and interdisciplinary communication of Economics journals. Journal of Economic Literature 40, 483–509.Google Scholar
Pringsheim, F (1961 [1950]) Justinian's prohibition of commentaries to the Digest. In Gesammelte Abhandlungen [Collected Works], Vol. 2. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, pp. 86–106.Google Scholar
Proust, M (1989 [1927]) À la Recherche du Temps Perdu [In Search of Lost Time]. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Ruphy, S (2011) From Hacking's plurality of styles of scientific reasoning to ‘foliated’ pluralism: a philosophically robust form of ontologico-methodological pluralism. Philosophy of Science 75, 1212–1222.Google Scholar
Sala, M (2012) Different systems, different styles: legal expertise and professional identities in legal research articles. In Gotti, M (ed.), Academic Identity Traits: A Corpus-based Investigation. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 121–142.Google Scholar
Schauer, F and Wise, V (2000) Non-legal information and the delegalization of law. The Journal of Legal Studies 29, 495–515.Google Scholar
Schlag, P (2002) The aesthetics of American law. Harvard Law Review 115, 1047–1118.Google Scholar
Schleiermacher, F (1838/1998) Hermeneutics and Criticism. Bowie, A (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sontag, S (1966) Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Stolker, C (2014) Rethinking the Law School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sword, H (2011) Stylish Academic Writing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Taekema, S and van Klink, B (eds) (2011) Law and Method: Interdisciplinary Research into Law. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.Google Scholar
Thornton, M (2004) The idea of the university and the contemporary legal academy. Sydney Law Review 26, 481–503.Google Scholar
Trésor de la langue française [online]. Available at http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/stylet (accessed 10 December 2017).Google Scholar
Valentin, P (1994) Style ou sens? [Style or meaning?]. In Molinié, G and Cahné, P (eds), Qu'est-ce que le style? [What Is Style?]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 331–339.Google Scholar
Vick, D (2004) Interdisciplinarity and the discipline of law. Journal of Law and Society 31, 163–193.Google Scholar
Vouilloux, B (2008) La portée du style [Style's reach]. Poétique 154, pp. 197–223.Google Scholar
Whorf, B (1956) Language, Thought, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar