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Translating the Social World for Law

Translating the Social World for Law Linguistic Tools for a New Legal Realism

Author: Elizabeth Mertz; William K. Ford; Gregory Matoesian
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
ISBN: 9780199990559
Published In: August 2016
Format: Hardback , 312 pages
Jurisdiction: U.S. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Description
Contents
Author

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This volume examines the linguistic problems that arise in efforts to translate between law and the social sciences. We usually think of
The contributors to this volume are members of an interdisciplinary working group on Legal Translation that met for a number of years. The group includes scholars from law, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, political science, psychology, and religious studies. The members of this group approach interdisciplinary communication as a form of disciplinary languages (or, " language. While such experts may intellectually understand that they differ regarding their fundamental assumptions and uses of language, they may nonetheless consistently underestimate the degree to which they are actually talking past one another. This problem takes on real-life significance when one of the fields is law, where how knowledge is conveyed can affect how justice is meted out.

Provides specific examples of difficulties facing interdisciplinary communication between law and social science in an era where the legal academy is once again turning to social science
Consists of contributions by law professors and social scientists who met together for a number of years to develop shared understandings of problems as well as productive approaches to interdisciplinary interactions
Draws on sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, and sister disciplines that are well-equipped to shed light on such a question
Specifically addresses emergent new audiences in law schools and in law-and-society studies that is interested in developing new interdisciplinary approaches

1.Introduction: Translating Law and Social Science
William K. Ford & Elizabeth Mertz

PART ONE Analyzing Legal Translations on the Ground

2. Translating Defendants' Apologies During Allocution at Sentencing
M. Catherine Gruber
2A Gruber Frances Tung

3. Translating Token Instances of ": The Discursive and
Multimodal Translation of Evidence into Precedent
Gregory Matoesian
3A Matoesian Christopher Roy and Elizabeth Mertz

4. Comments on Matoesian and Gruber: Performative Risks in Risking Performance
Michael Silverstein
4A Silverstein Elizabeth Mertz

PART TWO System-Level Challenges: When Courts Translate Social Science

5. The Law and Science of Video Game Violence: Who Lost More in Translation?
William K. Ford

6. Being Human: Negotiating Religion, Law, and Science in the Classroom and the Courtroom
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

7. Social Science and the Ways of the Trial Court: Possibilities of Translation
Robert P. Burns

8. Part Two Commentary: Processes of Translation and Demarcation in Legal Worlds
Susan Gal

PART THREE Toward Improved Translations: Recognizing the Barriers

9. Elizabeth Mertz

10. Law's Resistance to Translation: What Law & Literature Can Teach Us
Peter Brooks (interview)

PART FOUR Concluding Remarks

11. Afterword: Some Further Thoughts on Translating Law and Social Science
Gregory Matoesian

Elizabeth Mertz is John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and Research Faculty at the American Bar Foundation. Her research focuses on the language of law in the U.S., in part through an examination of how that language is taught to first-year law students. Her book on that process is entitled The Language of Law School: Learning to and it was the co-winner of the Herbert Jacob Prize of the Law & Society Association.

William K. Ford is Associate Professor of Law at John Marshall Law School. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago in 2003. Before joining the faculty at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, he worked for the Los Angeles firm of Irell & Manella and then returned to the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law.

Gregory M. Matoesian is Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His main area of study is language and multimodal practice in legal settings. He is the author of Reproducing Rape: Domination through Talk in the Courtroom (University of Chicago Press) and Law and the Language of Identity: Discourse in the William Kennedy Smith Rape Trial (Oxford University Press), as well as numerous articles in law and society and linguistic journals.

Contributors:

Peter Brooks is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Yale University and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholar in the University Center for Human Values and the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University.

Robert P. Burns is the William W. Gurley Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law.

William K. Ford is Associate Professor at the John Marshall Law School.

Susan Gal is Mae & Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, of Linguistics, and of Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

M. Catherine Gruber earned a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Chicago.

Gregory Matoesian is Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Elizabeth Mertz is John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin and Senior Research Faculty at the American Bar Foundation.

Michael Silverstein is Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, of Linguistics, and of Psychology and in the Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

Winnifred F. Sullivan is Professor and Chair in the Department of Religious Studies and Affiliate Professor of Law at Maurer School of Law at Indiana University, Bloomington.