Outer limits of a judicial trial

SMEJKALOVÁ, Terezie. Outer limits of a judicial trial. In 20th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (IRSL 2019). 2019.

Základní údaje

Originální název

Outer limits of a judicial trial

Autoři

SMEJKALOVÁ, Terezie

Vydání

20th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (IRSL 2019), 2019

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Další údaje

Jazyk

angličtina

Typ výsledku

Prezentace na konferencích

Obor

50501 Law

Stát vydavatele

Portugalsko

Utajení

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

Organizační jednotka

Právnická fakulta

Klíčová slova anglicky

discursive space; trial; proceedings; discursive boundaries of judicial proceedings; limits; publicity of a trial

Příznaky

Mezinárodní význam

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Anotace

V originále

Although disputed by many, the ever-popular Sapir-Whorf hypothesis maintains that our world is limited by our language. For many authors (e.g. Bourdieu, White, Hoecke) law is something created and conditioned by language and legal discourse; law may be understood as a discursive space. Knowledge of the language creating this space and the rules of its discourse may surely be perceived as advantageous. In this paper I shall understand the language of law (and the knowledge thereof) as a discursive enclosure of law. Therefore, not knowing the language of law limits our capabilities within the world created by law. Within this discursive space of law legal proceedings – a trial – may be perceived as a consecrated ritualistic space of a kind designated to resolve disputes: parties bring their disagreements into the designated discursive space, and it delivers the resolution (Allen 2007-2008 or Smejkalová 2017). The enclosure of this space has various dimensions, both physical and discursive. Recently, the social media landscape has been changing the nature of that space, opening the otherwise formalized proceedings to a wider informal debate, thus widening the space of the discourse, and in consequence, contesting the limits of independent judicial decision-making. This paper tackles the issues of the discursive boundaries of a trial and shows that because of the trial’s essentially liminal nature contesting the limits of the space of a trial delimited by the traditionally specialized language diffuses the established discursive limits of law and those of a trial, possibly pushing the limits of judicial independence and influencing the classic notion of the publicity of a legal trial.