Semiotics in the Trial of Jurisprudence
| Published date | 01 January 1990 |
| Author | Peter Rush |
| Date | 01 January 1990 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1990.tb01798.x |
REVIEW ARTICLE
Semiotics in the Trial
of
Jurisprudence
Peter Rush”
Bernard
S.
Jackson,
Law, Fact and Narrative Coherence,
Merseyside: Deborah Charles
Publications,
1988,
x
and 214 pp, hb g18.00.
In the book under review, the theoretical apparatus of legal semiotics is wielded to give
an account of legal adjudication in the common law trial. Looking back at what has been
written here, it can be seen that the review takes up three contexts: the machinations
of
jurisprudence, the detour of legal theory into linguistic meta-rkcits or tall tales, and the
genre of legal academic writing. The review argues that what is
not
at stake in
Law,
Fact
and Narrative Coherence is the enterprise of jurisprudence.
As
will become clear, in order
to make that argument, it would not be necessary to understand what the mots clefs
of
semiotics mean.
As
Bernard Jackson asks of his own book, ‘Is it intended to be taken
seriously, or is it play, or even a joke?’ (p.5). Jackson’s answer
is
that, apart from a playful
remark here and there, the general intention is serious. My own answer would be to ask
whether it is necessary to choose.
A
Crisis in Manners: or,
how
the butler asks the right questions
There are few questions
in
Jurisprudence. The positivist tradition has been the most succinct,
if not the most repetitive and limiting. What is the Law? What is its justification? Or,
more narrowly, what is a ver-dict and in what ways can the judicious telling of law’s
truth be justified? In fact, the separability of these two questions has provided the context
of much contemporary jurisprudence: law and facts, description and evaluation, facts and
values, law and politics. Just as textbook commentary on law is an extended footnote to
legal cases,
so
too jurisprudence becomes a long and authoritative footnote to the question
‘what is it?’. Invariably, this ‘what’ has been referred and deferred to the institutional
context of adjudication, that place where the judge ‘reasons’. But such a context is simply
a pitstop for jurisprudence in its race towards more inflated issues. For, just as the judge
and the magistrate would claim to be acting in the name of something else,
so
too
jurisprudence quickly refers adjudication to Justice, Liberty, Equality, Rationality, Public
Policy. One could thus be excused for thinking that jurisprudence conducts its business
with all the (im)modesty of a butler. It is modest in its desire to explain the law
and
nothing
but the Law.
It
is immodest in its abject moralism, which would extend the law to all,
which would deploy the law to explain all. The butler is at once guardian and servant
of the household. And
so
the enterprise of jurisprudence takes its place at the door
of
the law and has repeatedly whispered: will that be all for today, my Honour? Of course,
as Dworkin has said, the correct answer is always forthcoming. When and where
jurisprudence holds court, there the butler can rest assured, at ease in the knowledge that,
having asked the proper questions and asked them with respect, the proper answers will
have been given. In short, the butler asks the right questions because he already has the
right answers. Up his sleeve.
*University
of
Lancaster
lke
Modem Law Review 53:l
January
1990 0026-7961
121
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