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.

Basic information

• Original name: Outer limits of a judicial trial
• Authors: SMEJKALOVÁ, Terezie.
• Edition: 20th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (IRSL 2019), 2019.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 50501 Law
• Country of publisher: Portugal
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Organization unit: Faculty of Law
• Keywords in English: discursive space; trial; proceedings; discursive boundaries of judicial proceedings; limits; publicity of a trial
• Tags: International impact

Abstract

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.