2025
Construction of vague legal concepts: the LEGO® experience
SMEJKALOVÁ, TerezieZákladní údaje
Originální název
Construction of vague legal concepts: the LEGO® experience
Autoři
Vydání
Critical Legal Conference 2025, 2025
Další údaje
Jazyk
angličtina
Typ výsledku
Prezentace na konferencích
Obor
50500 5.5 Law
Utajení
není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství
Označené pro přenos do RIV
Ne
Organizační jednotka
Právnická fakulta
Klíčová slova anglicky
social representations; conceptualization; legal education; LEGO; vague legal concepts
Změněno: 10. 3. 2026 16:48, Mgr. Petra Georgala
Anotace
V originále
Legal meaning-making is not a quiet thing (paraphrasing Howarth 2006 ). Law students are often led to understand legal interpretation as an activity of uncovering meaning that is somehow “out there” and are not aware of the social mechanisms behind its construction, including the fact that they – not only as citizens but also as future lawyers and judges – participate in this construction. To serve as an introduction into classes focused on social construction of meaning, social categorization legal conceptualization, I have developed an exercise using LEGO bricks. In my ongoing research, I explore vague legal concepts as social representations (Moscovici 2001). The social representations paradigm sees concepts as collective elaborations that are constantly constructed and re-constructed in the process of social communication. Building on this theory, I approach vagueness not as a technical problem to be resolved, but as a symptom of law’s embeddedness in broader social and communicative practices that reflect—and reproduce—dominant norms, structures and categorization. To make this process tangible, I developed an experimental pedagogical exercise using a combination of a research method used in social representations research (specifically hierarchical evocation) and LEGO® bricks, through which students collaboratively construct the meaning of an unfamiliar legal concept. This exercise functions as a critical intervention: it disorients students’ assumptions about legal objectivity, and invites them to grapple with the contingent, collective, and contested nature of legal meaning-making. In doing so, it explores how even playful, material methods can unsettle legal formalism and reveal the deep entanglement of law, language, and social power. It shows various types of limitations we face when (re)constructing meaning, played out not only in aspects such as previous knowledge and education or value-orientation, but also the constrictions given by the amount and types of bricks available or by the willingness and skills to participate in the meaning negotiations.
Návaznosti
| MUNI/A/1633/2024, interní kód MU |
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