La lingua del giudice

Abstract

The magic nature of legal language, i.e. its capacity to modify the world, is particularly evident in the decisions of the judge. In this chapter some distinctive features of this text type are outlined, viz. its complex textuality, and a few cases are investigated in which the judge reflects on language. Search in the case-law for undesired consequences of the obscurity of
normative texts reveals how such obscurity is often hidden in apparently harmless linguistic elements, such as adverbs, presuppositions or conjunctions, with legally relevant consequences.