Haack on The Art of Scientific Metaphors @MiamiLawSchool

Susan Haack, University of Miami School of Law, University of Miami Department of Philosophy, has published The Art of Scientific Metaphors at 75 Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 2049 (2019). Here is the abstract.

Metaphor has no place in science, some claim; no, others argue, metaphor is crucial to science. Science is a rational enterprise with its own distinctive logical structure; no, it isn’t essentially different from literature, equally a kind of world-making. There is a distinctive metaphorical kind of meaning; no, metaphorical utterances have only their literal meanings, in which they are just plain false. Conspicuous by its absence is the reasonable middle ground Haack will be mapping here. Metaphor is useful, but not essential, to scientific work; metaphors don’t have a special kind of meaning, but they do have a special pragmatic role; scientific work and the writing of fiction do have important things in common, but there are also significant differences between the two enterprises. Once we understand how science works (§1), and then how metaphors work (§2), we can articulate the similarities, and differences, between scientific metaphors and literary ones (§3).

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Narrative and Metaphor in the Law: Forthcoming From Cambridge University Press @CambridgeUP @ArsScripta

Forthcoming from Cambridge University Press: Narrative and Metaphor in the Law (Michael Hanne and Robert Weisberg, eds., 2018). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

It has long been recognized that court trials, both criminal and civil, in the common law system, operate around pairs of competing narratives told by opposing advocates. In recent years, however, it has increasingly been argued that narrative flows in many directions and through every form of legal theory and practice. Interest in the part played by metaphor in the law, including metaphors for the law, and for many standard concepts in legal practice, has also been strong, though research under the metaphor banner has been much more fragmentary. In this book, for the first time, a distinguished group of legal scholars, collaborating with specialists from cognitive theory, journalism, rhetoric, social psychology, criminology, and legal activism, explore how narrative and metaphor are both vital to the legal process. Together, they examine topics including concepts of law, legal persuasion, human rights law, gender in the law, innovations in legal thinking, legal activism, creative work around the law, and public debate around crime and punishment. Takes the form of nine conversations between pairs of eminent scholars in different disciplines Opens up discussion for the first time of the joint roles of narrative and metaphor in the law Topics include legal persuasion, gender in the law, judicial opinions and public debate around crime and punishment

Contents include:

Introduction Michael Hanne and Robert Weisberg

1. Narrative, metaphor and concepts of justice and legal systems Greta Olson and Lawrence Rosen

2. Narrative and metaphor in legal persuasion Michael R. Smith and Raymond W. Gibbs

3. Narrative and metaphor in judicial opinions Simon Stern and Peter Brooks

4. Narrative, metaphor and gender in the law Linda L. Berger and Kathryn M. Stanchi

5. Narrative, metaphor and innovations in legal thinking Roberto H. Potter

6. Narrative and metaphor in public debate around crime and punishment Dahlia Lithwick and L. David Ritchie

7. Narrative and metaphor in human rights law Katherine Young and Bernadette Meyler

8. Narrative and metaphor in creative work around the law Lawrence Joseph and Meredith Wallis

9. Narrative and metaphor in legal activism Mari Matsuda.

Gill on Law, Metaphor, and the Encrypted Machine @citizenlab

Lex Gill, University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs, Citizen Lab, has published Law, Metaphor and the Encrypted Machine. Here is the abstract.

The metaphors we use to imagine, describe and regulate new technologies have profound legal implications. This paper offers a critical examination of the metaphors we choose to describe encryption technology in particular, and aims to uncover some of the normative and legal implications of those choices. Part I provides a basic description of encryption as a mathematical and technical process. At the heart of this paper is a question about what encryption is to the law. It is therefore fundamental that readers have a shared understanding of the basic scientific concepts at stake. This technical description will then serve to illustrate the host of legal and political problems arising from encryption technology, the most important of which are addressed in Part II. That section also provides a brief history of various legislative and judicial responses to the encryption “problem,” mapping out some of the major challenges still faced by jurists, policymakers and activists. While this paper draws largely upon common law sources from the United States and Canada, metaphor provides a core form of cognitive scaffolding across legal traditions. Part III explores the relationship between metaphor and the law, demonstrating the ways in which it may shape, distort or transform the structure of legal reasoning. Part IV demonstrates that the function served by legal metaphor is particularly determinative wherever the law seeks to integrate novel technologies into old legal frameworks. Strong, ubiquitous commercial encryption has created a range of legal problems for which the appropriate metaphors remain unfixed. Part V establishes a loose framework for thinking about how encryption has been described by courts and lawmakers—and how it could be. What does it mean to describe the encrypted machine as a locked container or building? As a combination safe? As a form of speech? As an untranslatable library or an unsolvable puzzle? What is captured by each of these cognitive models, and what is lost? This section explores both the technological accuracy and the legal implications of each choice. Finally, the paper offers a few concluding thoughts about the utility and risk of metaphor in the law, reaffirming the need for a critical, transparent and lucid appreciation of language and the power it wields.

Notes: DISCUSSION DRAFT ONLY As this document is a discussion draft, please do not cite or reproduce this work without the author’s written permission.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Narrative and Metaphor in the Law, Edited by Michael Hanne and Robert Weisberg, Due in 2018 From Cambridge University Press @Stanford @AucklandUni

Forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2018: Narrative and Metaphor in the Law, edited by Michael Hanne, University of Auckland, and Robert Weisberg, Stanford University. Here is a description of the book's contents.

It has long been recognized that court trials, both criminal and civil, in the common law system, operate around pairs of competing narratives told by opposing advocates. In recent years, however, it has increasingly been argued that narrative flows in many directions and through every form of legal theory and practice. Interest in the part played by metaphor in the law, including metaphors for the law, and for many standard concepts in legal practice, has also been strong, though research under the metaphor banner has been much more fragmentary. In this book, for the first time, a distinguished group of legal scholars, collaborating with specialists from cognitive theory, journalism, rhetoric, social psychology, criminology, and legal activism, explore how narrative and metaphor are both vital to the legal process. Together, they examine topics including concepts of law, legal persuasion, human rights law, gender in the law, innovations in legal thinking, legal activism, creative work around the law, and public debate around crime and punishment.

Takes the form of nine conversations between pairs of eminent scholars in different disciplines

Opens up discussion for the first time of the joint roles of narrative and metaphor in the law

Topics include legal persuasion, gender in the law, judicial opinions and public debate around crime and punishment

Includes contributions by Michael Hanne, Robert Weisberg, Greta Olson, Lawrence Rosen, Michael R. Smith, Raymond W. Gibbs, Simon Stern, Peter Brooks, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Roberto H. Potter, Dahlia Lithwick, L. David Ritchie, Katherine Young, Bernadette Meyler, Lawrence Joseph, Meredith Wallis, Mari Matsuda.

Stefan Larsson's New Book: Conceptions in the Code: How Metaphors Explain Legal Challenges In Digital Times @lastsys

Via @maksdelmar

Stefan Larsson, Associate Professor in Technology and Social Change, Lund University Internet Institute (LUii), Sweden, is publishing Conceptions in the Code: How Metaphors Explain Legal Challenges in Digital Times (Oxford, 2017) (Oxford Studies in Language and Law). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

Stefan Larsson's Conceptions in the Code makes a significant contribution to sociolegal analysis, representing a valuable contribution to conceptual metaphor theory. By utilising the case of copyright in a digital context it explains the role that metaphor plays when the law is dealing with technological change, displaying both conceptual path-dependence as well as what is called non-legislative developments in the law. The overall analysis draws from conceptual studies of "property" in intellectual property. By using Karl Renner's account of property, Larsson demonstrates how the property regime of copyright is the projection of an older regime of control onto a new set of digital social relations. Further, through an analysis of the concept of "copy" in copyright as well as the metaphorical battle of defining the BitTorrent site "The Pirate Bay" in the Swedish court case with its founders, Larsson shows the historical and embodied dependence of digital phenomena in law, and thereby how normative aspects of the source concept also stains the target domain. The book also draws from empirical studies on file sharing and historical expressions of the conceptualisation of law, revealing both the cultural bias of both file sharing and law. Also law is thereby shown to be largely depending on metaphors and embodiment to be reified and understood. The contribution is relevant for the conceptual and regulatory struggles of a multitude of contemporary socio-digital phenomena in addition to copyright and file sharing, including big data and the oft-praised "openness" of digital innovation.

 

Sloan and Starger @ColinStarger on Metaphor and Legal Research

Amy E. Sloan and Colin P. Starger, both of the University of Baltimore School of Law, are publishing New Wine in Old Wineskins: Metaphor and Legal Research in the 2016 Notre Dame Law Review Online. Here is the abstract.

We construct our conceptual world using metaphors. Yet sometimes our concepts are flawed and our metaphors do damage. This Article examines a set of metaphors currently doing damage in law – those for legal research. It shows that while technology has radically altered the material world of legal research, our dominant metaphors have remained static, and thus, become outmoded. Conceptualizing today’s reality using old metaphors fails; it is like pouring new wine in old wineskins. To address this problem, this Article first surfaces unwarranted assumptions buried in the metaphors we use when talking about research and then proposes new metaphors to better serve theory and practice. It concludes by examining how this investigation into “finding law” implicates primary jurisprudential concepts of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.