Publication details
Producing Legal Space
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In the opinion of many legal thinkers, law is delimited by legal discourse – or, essentially, legal language. When we maintain that legal language and law are thus interconnected, any change in legal discourse results in a change in law. Similarly, the space of law is delimited by the space created by its discourse. Adopting this understanding of law means that law is practically as complex as any other social reality. Detailed charting of such discursively created space is nearly impossible and by definition remains incomplete. Therefore, it can be argued that introducing new (innovative, creative, non-traditional) arguments in a trial results in a change of its discursive space. This paper addresses such a change and tackles the issues behind the following questions: How far can the change go? Can a new argument that goes beyond what is a traditionally (or legally) acceptable argument bring about a change in the space of a trial? Is any interpretation that goes beyond the grammatical and logical methods of interpretation bending of the legal space (space of a trial)? |