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Dennis Kurzon, "A Speech Act Approach to 'Dead Letter' Legislation", in Hanneke van Schooten, ed., Semiotics and Legislation. Jurisprudential, Institutional and Sociological Perspectives, 123-137: In this article, the "dead letter" status of a law is analyzed in terms of speech act theory. The analysis is based on previous discussion of speech act theory and legislation, as well as on two court cases, one American and the second Israeli, in which the notion of the "dead-letter" status of a law is central. From an initial assumption that the source of a "dead-letter" law is one of the preparatory conditions, in that the hearers -- members of general public -- are unable to fulfil the law, hence do not fulfil the condition "Hearer is able to do Act. Speaker believes that H is able to the act," it is shown that the propositional content condition, i.e. the semantic structure of the provision, may also be a source for converting a legislative text into a dead letter.

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