INTRODUCTION TO LEGAL LANGUAGE Maciej Pichlak PhD Department of Legal Theory and Philosophy of Law University of Wrocław

https://prawo.uni.wroc.pl/user/12147 Getting organized 1 Maciej Pichlak maciej.pichlak@uwr.edu.pl room 302 A https://prawo.uni.wroc.pl/user/12147

Getting organized 2 Completion of the course CLASSES: Practical Test LECTURES: Written exam

Concepts and the world

Concepts and the world The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Language is by no means simply an instrument, a tool. For it is in the nature of the tool that we master its use , which is to say we take it in hand and lay it aside when it has done its service. That is not the same as when we take the words of a language (…) Rather, in all our knowledge of ourselves and in all knowledge of the world, we are always already encompassed by the language that is our own. We grow up, and we become acquainted with men and in the last analysis with ourselves when we learn to speak. Learning to speak does not mean learning to use a preexistent tool for designating a world already somehow familiar to us; it means acquiring a familiarity and acquaintance with the world itself. (…) In truth we are always already at home in laguage, just as much as we are in the world. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Man and Language

Topics of the lectures Law as a complex concept. Functions of law. Notions of legal order, legal culture, and legal practice. Legal system. Various types of legal systems. Basic families of legal order Sources of law and law creating in various legal systems. Legal rules and principles Legal reasoning and interpretation. Interpreting statutes and precedents. Application of law. Forms and structure of legal proceedings.

A break for advertisements And now... A break for advertisements

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-STkFCCrus

The law as the world (language) 'We live in and by the law. It makes us what we are: citizens and employees and doctors and spouses and people who owe things. It is sword, shield and menace: we insist on our wage, or refuse to pay our rent, or are forced to forfeit penalties, or are closed up in jail, all in the name of what our abstract and ethereal sovereign, the law, has decreed. (...) We are subjects of law's empire, liegemen to its methods and ideals, bound in spirit while we debate what we must therefore do.' Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire

Reading, resources Slides from lectures: prawo.uni.wroc.pl/node/18810 Sylabus: prawo.uni.wroc.pl/node/12732