Legal discourse

Abstract

Law is a form of discourse especially aligned to power in that the state is uniquely authorised to generate those forms of legal discourse conventionally recognised as law, such as legislation and judgments. This chapter considers Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) scholarship that enters questions and issues of law through state law's conventional sites and texts to demonstrate the inextricable enmeshments of law, language, and power. It reviews scholarship that applies CDS to discourses of legitimacy that appear in the place of conventional legal discourse in post-9/11 contexts. The chapter traces the varieties of legal discourses to demonstrate some of the ways in which CDS, as an analytic approach, generates insights and analysis with an extensive interdisciplinary reach. It offers brief sections on legislation, international law, and law's categories. The chapter reviews literature relating to trials and legal professional actors, discourses of legitimacy, and draws on case study rule of law discourse in Singapore.

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