Law and Semiotics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Introduction to the First Round Table on Law and Semiotics

   • Roberta Kevelson

   Pages 1-24

3. Analytical Rhetoric, Semiotic and Law

   • Ottmar Ballweg

   Pages 25-33

4. The Semiotic Web of the Law

   • Robert W. Benson

   Pages 35-63

5. The Shopping Mall: Signs of Power

   • Denis J. Brion

   Pages 65-108

6. The Prescriptions of the New Hobbesian Contractarian

   • William C. Charron

   Pages 109-130

7. Animals as Property and the Law

   • Priscilla Cohn

   Pages 131-148

8. The Problem of Normative Authority in Legal Interpretation

   • Drucilla Cornell

   Pages 149-157

9. Natural Law and Emancipation: Toward a Theonomous Democracy

   • Robert S. Corrington

   Pages 159-179

10. Communication Research and the Practice of Lawyering: Is the Tail Wagging the Dog?

    • Paul Evangelista

    Pages 181-192

11. Psychoanalysis in Legal Education: Notes on the Violence of the Sign

    • Peter Goodrich

    Pages 193-213

12. The Rhetoric of Esotericism: The ‘Challenge’ to Deconstruction

    • Irene E. Harvey

    Pages 215-237

13. Legitimizing ‘Repugnancy’ in Law: Peirce and Contradiction

    • Roberta Kevelson

    Pages 239-281

14. Constitutionalism: Principle and Policy

    • Joseph Margolis

    Pages 283-309

15. The United States Constitution: A Semiotic Interpretation

    • William Pencak

    Pages 311-340

16. The Merely Symbolic

    • Robert G. Price

    Pages 341-348

17. Back Matter

    Pages 349-354

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However, it became apparent shortly after the establishing of the Center that not only were all methods of legal semiotics not Peircean in origin, but were in their respective foundational assumptions not likely to be compatible with Peirce's semiotics without some radical, transforming development of the idea, 'legal semiotics'. It was clear that if one would intend to be faithful to Peircean semiotics then holding a fixed notion of what an idea of Peircean semiotics of law means would be a violation of the spirit of Peirce's thought; this above all emphasizes the growth and development of initiative ideas and also the stricture that all leading principles must be subject to revision. Even the idea of Peircean semiotics, as leading principle, must itself be an open idea, the meaning of which must be transformable through the process of defining it. A metasemiotics view of a semiotics of law must leave open the possibility for revision of the leading principle of the term, "legal semiotics. " Therefore, if legal semiotics is an idea which accumulates and evolves its meaning in the very process of self-examination, then a process of investigating law investigates itself as well in any semiotic process of inquiry. It became apparent that the most appropriate contribution the Center could make to the area of a Peirce an semiotics would be to act as a sponsor, an inclusive rather than exclusive agent for inquiry of all kinds into the general topic of law and semiotics.

• Interpretation
• Legal Semiotics
• Nation
• communication
• democracy
• education
• law and semiotics
• natural law
• rhetoric
• semiotics
• violence
• literary diction

• Pennsylvania State University, Reading, USA

  Roberta Kevelson

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