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Willem J. Witteveen, Tilburg University, The Netherlands,
""Significant, Symbolic, and Symphonic Laws", in Hanneke
van Schooten, ed., Semiotics and Legislation.
Jurisprudential, Institutional and Sociological Perspectives, 27-70:
The creation of statutes is an act which produces meaning. There are large
variations in the extent and quality of the significance of legislation.
What pictures of communication through legislation are prevalent in a legal
culture? This paper articulates two simple semiotic models that are derived
from widely held notions in this regard. It also enquires into the normative
consequences of an understanding of the nature of communication through
laws. In part A of this paper, a message model will be developed for determining
the significance of statutes. Part B then postulates an alternative model,
relating to the symbolic dimension of laws, and proposing a textual model
of communication. Both are essentially simple models that are clearly unable
to capture all actual processes of communication through legislation. In
order to highlight the potential for constructive cooperation between officials
and citizens in designing laws that communicate better, in part C of the
paper a third mode of understanding legislation and communication is tentatively
suggested. This is based on the metaphor of law as a symphonic performance.
The semiotics of legislation - exercised through the two communication models
and the additional metaphor of symphonic activity - makes it possible to
rethink the art of institutional design, as proposed in the later writings
of Lon Fuller (part D).
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