Book
Author Phillips, Alfred.

Title Lawyers' language : how and why legal language is different / Alfred Phillips
Published London ; New York : Routledge, 2003

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  K 100 Phi/Llh  AVAILABLE
Description 1 online resource (vi, 194 pages)
Contents 1. Breaking ground -- 2. How critical language theory seeks and then struggles against its own undoing -- 3. Interpretation -- 4. Constructive interpretation -- 5. Conclusions
Summary "The law presumes that everyone knows the law, yet the obscurity of lawyers' language puts it out of reach of those who are presumed to know it." "The aim of this book is to establish that, on the contrary, the development and maintenance of the law's special language can be justified. The notion of representation is applied to the relationship between legal language and ordinary language. In a judge's use of a language designed to build a coherent and internally consistent body of applied law, which will stand in a relationship of representation to ordinary language, the judge can properly be said to be the people's representative." "Cases are used throughout the book to underpin the author's argument. Lawyers' Language justifies the transformation of ordinary language into a special discourse for the purposes of the legal system."--BOOK JACKET
Notes "Simultaneously published in US and Canada"--Title page verso
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-185) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Habermas, Jürgen.
English language.
Law -- Language.
Law -- Interpretation and construction.
Democracy.
Law.
LC no. 2002068347