The Semiotic Approach to Jurisprudence: Can it make an original contribution? - Some brief reflections

Abstract

Legal semiotics offers a critical point of view and attempts a new approach to legal theory, based on a different kind of rationality which appeals to the construction of sense through narrative models, thus reaching the conclusion that there is no conceptual difference between law and fact. Hence, it aims to offer a fresh approach to legal theory, especially in what concerns the way of explaining decision-making and justification of legal decisions – whether the case is easy or hard. Working “ex post facto, legal jurisprudence seeks to provide an explanation of how meaning was actually created, not what meaning will or could be created”. By doing so, legal semiotics, returning to the private psychological processes in order to understand the sort of sense the decision makes, criticizes the legal syllogism as not being able to accurately account for all the deep structures in which legal discourse is embedded.