The comprehensible style of legal texts seems to be a predominantly linguistic problem. This is how the plain-legal-language movements present it. But, while plain-language statutes have been on the agenda for decades in every civilised country, laws still become more and more complicated. The paper attempts to explain this controversy. First, it argues that comprehensibility has more aspects beyond the linguistic or stylistic one. Sometimes it is the linguistically simplest texts that raise the most serious comprehensibility problems. The paper refers to two pieces of corpus linguistic research that provide evidence that vocabulary and grammar in themselves do not explain the incomprehensibility of the legal texts. Second, for a more subtle handling of the comprehensibility problem, the paper offers a framework of three typical pragmatic situations – the processual, the problem-solving and the compliance settings – where comprehensibility problems arise in different ways. The conclusion of the paper is that, contrary to the usual explanation that the main reason for incomprehensibility is that, in law, clarity and accuracy can be only employed at each other's expense, it is rather the systemic and interpretive character of law and the growing importance of technical rules that hinder the understanding of legal texts.

This paper discusses the promises and limits of a Peircean semiotic approach to the concept of style in law. It does so in two steps: first (1) by identifying the place of style within the structure of law as a system of signs, then (2) by conceptualising the link between law and style in the thought of C.S. Peirce and highlighting some of the insights from a Peircean take on legal semiotics that may contribute to our understanding of the role of style in making meaning in law. It is argued that, for a Peircean analysis of law, three levels can be distinguished, from the ‘surface structure’ down to the ‘deep structure’. It is at the middle level (that of the ‘basic structure’) that a semiotic approach can yield coherent insights in terms of style, by examining the symbols and metaphors that make for the expressibility of ‘habits’, namely experience-based patterns of action and interpretation.

The question of legal ‘style’ is a central one in comparative law, as mainstream comparative law tends to downplay its importance. The kinds of comparative law scholarship that have attracted most attention in the last decades – the ‘harmonisation projects’ and the ‘legal origins’ literature (perhaps also the ‘legal formant’ literature) – indeed adopt a functionalistic approach to legal systems, whereby only the outcome of judicial decisions (and the factors causally feeding into them) matters – that is, their style does not. This narrow perspective has led to arguments in favour of harmonisation of law worldwide – the thesis according to which law everywhere does and should converge so as to facilitate transnational commerce and globalisation more generally. I propose to argue that legal style matters, as law is about much more than just resolving disputes. Specifically, it is also, and most importantly, a collective statement of identity. To illustrate, I plan on analysing some of the most striking stylistic differences between French and English law, and outline the different such statements emerging from them.

Through a close reading of Konrad Zweigert's 1961 essay and related writings, the paper discusses his use of the term ‘style’ in the classification of legal families, making three arguments. First, Zweigert's use of style is methodologically naive. He uses style as a cluster concept, grouping an eclectic mix of features characteristic for the history, language, techniques, doctrines and values of national laws. His explicit sources seem to have provided associative and superficial inspiration rather than a theoretical basis for this terminological move. Second, Zweigert's methodology could have been improved by using more rigorous style concepts – and he seems to have been aware of the necessary theoretical resources. Third, such a commitment to a humanistic and cultural approach to comparative law is not easily reconciled with the blunt functionalism of Zweigert's programmatic methodological statements. His style doctrine is only compatible with a weak version of functionalism as a ‘methodological metaphor’: the version he actually espoused.

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.

In England, sex workers are placed at the edges of the law. How the social and legal status of sex workers impacts on their perception of and interaction with the law in a semi-legal setting has not yet been explored. Drawing on fifty-two qualitative interviews with indoor and outdoor sex workers in England, this study investigates their disposition to the law, legality and the state. The commonalities and discrepancies between the experiences of indoor and outdoor sex workers reveal the influence of the combination of legal framework and social status on sex workers’ legal consciousness. This study finds that, even in a setting of semi-legality, sex workers attempt to avoid contact with state authorities. However, this aversion to the current law does not prevent them from making claims for legal change. Surprisingly, indoor and outdoor sex workers hold opposing views on the appropriate level of regulation and state involvement in the sex industry. Remarkably, although outdoor sex workers have more negative experiences with arbitrators of the law, they desire the law's protection. In contrast, indoor sex workers’ main grievance is for sex work to be a legitimate industry that can operate with only minimal state control. These differences in outdoor and indoor workers’ legal claims are explicable by sharp cleavages in social status, vulnerability and degree of criminalisation. These findings demonstrate that intra-group differences in the legal consciousness of marginalised groups are key to understanding the role of social and legal status in shaping legal claims.

This paper identifies and engages with the social bodies emerging by virtue of the social turn in the life sciences and recent embodied approaches to social justice. Across these diverse domains, bodies are being narrated as shaped by and dependent on their environments. To explore this potentially important and productive convergence, we bring Martha Fineman's vulnerability theory into conversation with neuroscience and environmental epigenetics. We foreground significant intersecting concerns and argue that vulnerability theory – and other embodied models of social justice – is strengthened by taking embodiment seriously, including attending to the social turn in the life sciences. This can enhance the potential traction of these progressive theories. These in turn provide an alternative theoretical framework to the neoliberal lens through which neuroscience and epigenetics have hitherto been translated into policy and practice. We nevertheless acknowledge the potential limitations and dangers of the current biopolitical landscape.