Jonathan Yovel, University of Haifa Faculty of Law, has posted What Can Lawyers Learn from Renaissance Drama?
--Dan ErnstWhat can lawyers, who are typically engaged in challenges of persuasion across the entire spectrum of practice, learn from the use of normative language in literature, particularly drama? Normative -- and specifically legal -- language offers parties shared vocabularies for forming and organizing disputes. It mediates grievances, shapes positions, and restricts the expression of legitimate argument. While it does so in legal settings, the reach of legal language extends beyond the law. Legal and normative languages are restrictive and generative: like grammar, they restrict valid modes of expression while inviting speakers to challenge, explore, expand and create new ones. Normative language is relevant to argument since it responds to the latter's need to bridge different points of view through a commitment to effective communication. Absent a shared basis of discourse ethics and the recognition it entails, talk deteriorates to linguistic quarrel and a struggle for domination.
Sampson Bringing Down the Temple (NYPL)
The present study looks at the creative and restrictive roles of legal and normative language in two central dramas of the renaissance, that present distinctive and diverse approaches to normativity and the use of legal language: Bradamante (1582) by Robert Garnier (who was also a high ranking judge), and John Milton’s passionately personal work, Samson Agonistes (1671). While The latter abounds with legal metaphors and structures, the former lacks them almost entirely. The article explores the effects of this variance and offers a systematic treatment of key elements of discourse ethics and their role in persuasion and the construction of dispute.
