Book contents
- Properties of Law
- Law in Context
- Properties of Law
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- Prologue
- Part I Sociality
- 1 Return of the Repressed
- 2 Social Practices
- 3 Sociolegal Practices
- 4 Specialised Legal Practices
- 5 Legal Discourse
- Part II Normativity
- Part III Plurality
- Epilogue
- References
- Index
- Other Books in the Series (continued from page iv)
5 - Legal Discourse
from Part I - Sociality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 September 2021
- Properties of Law
- Law in Context
- Properties of Law
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- Prologue
- Part I Sociality
- 1 Return of the Repressed
- 2 Social Practices
- 3 Sociolegal Practices
- 4 Specialised Legal Practices
- 5 Legal Discourse
- Part II Normativity
- Part III Plurality
- Epilogue
- References
- Index
- Other Books in the Series (continued from page iv)
Summary
Despite their different functions in law and society, specialised legal practices are interlinked. They produce legal texts: laws and travaux préparatoires, court decisions, and scholarly papers and treatises. These are legal speech acts which are recursively linked with each other to constitute a common legal discourse. It is this discourse which, at the surface level of law, determines the momentary contents of the normative legal order, that is, the law in force. In modern state law, legislators bear the main responsibility for establishing new legal norms. During the legislative process, travaux préparatoires are published by law-drafting and deliberative bodies, such as legislative bills submitted to parliament, and reports by governmental and parliamentary committees. These may be considered as legal speech acts on their own. The main task of judicial practices is to apply the law in force to concrete cases and thus to secure its realisation. Yet, especially through precedents issued in hard cases, courts also exercise legislative and doctrinal functions and modify what counts as the law in force. Finally, through its interpretative and systematising, doctrine-developing interventions, legal scholarship, too, impacts the contents of the momentary legal order.
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- Properties of LawModern Law and After, pp. 115 - 124Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021