Publication details
Showing by Fiction: Audience of Extra-legal References in Judicial Decisions
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| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | Since the Velvet Revolution, a shift in the legal culture has been taking place. The Czech apex courts, including the new Constitutional Court, have adopted and focused on complex ways to justify decisions in hard cases. Among these, there started to be made references to doctrinal writing and, on rather rare occasions, even to extra-legal writing, literary works, such as novels or plays; fiction. These references to extra-legal writing appear in various forms: from a mere mention of a name of a writer to lengthy quotations followed by a full reference to the source. References to these sources may of course be subtler: a hint, a phrase. But since these are much more difficult to spot (and it may sometimes be impossible to prove a hint or a phrase is such a reference at all), I will focus solely on overt references and will examine the role of these: may we dismiss them as purely rhetorical ornaments or do they have any communicative value? Is this communicative value related to a specific audience? And since they are essentially extra-legal, may their communicative value be intended for those among all the possible future readers of judicial decisions with no legal education? Building on the specific case of referring to extra-legal literary writing, this chapter will argue that showing, referencing and using examples in law is essentially a matter of addressing an argument to a specific audience. |