Sol Azuelos-Atias

• PhD
• University of Haifa

The Pragmatic Turn in Law: Inference and Interpretation in Legal DiscourseJanet Giltrow and Dieter Stein (eds.) (2017)De Gruyter 373pp

It is widely accepted that the legal sub-language-the language of the written law, court discussions, and legal documents-needs rephrasing in order to make it understandable to legal laypersons. Adler (2012) holds that this is possible: legal texts can be rephrased in plain language (rather than in "legalese"). The features that need rephrasing in...

The use of the oath in Jewish law reflects the religious nature of this system of law: in case a litigant cannot receive justice from the human judges s/he is entitled to call on God by swearing an oath. I begin this survey of the use of oaths in Jewish law with a discussion of the nature of “swearing an oath” based on biblical stories and biblical...

Theme: The development of legal language and its interpretation; linguistic and pragmatic aspects of the evolution of the synchronic understanding August 1-4 2016 University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

I present a tool of interpretation that can be applied to legal texts. The tool is intended for people who wish to make sure that they thoroughly understand a certain text – including the meanings hidden between its lines in general, and in particular for legal laypersons who wish to make sure that they thoroughly understand a legal text. I have de...

This work studies manipulative use of language that can be called “deliberate failure of communication”; I characterize this kind of manipulation and show that it can be found in the discourse of marketing experts and legal professionals. Relying on relevance theory, I show that manipulation of this kind takes advantage of what van Dijk calls the “...

After a brief survey of the Israeli legal system, I will elucidate how the method of judicial interpretation used in Israeli courts is applied by means of an example of the judicial interpretation of section 37 of the Land Appreciation Tax Law (1963) presented by Judge Grunis in the Shadmi case. This case reveals a controversy among the judges of t...

In this study, I discuss the unique Israeli way of statutory interpretation according to which the court should interpret statutes in light of the purpose behind their legislation. After a brief survey of the Israeli legal system, I discuss the place of interpretation in legal philosophy in general and in the legal philosophy of Aharon Barak – the...

I will suggest, in this article, a possible explanation of the fact that legal language appears incoherent to the general public. I will present one legal text (an indictment), explaining why it appears incoherent to legal laypersons. I will argue that the traits making this particular text appear incoherent are, first, that a specialized legal mea...

In this article I discuss one of the linguistic means which enables speakers to represent content in their utterances without expressing it explicitly. I will argue, in line withWilson and Sperber, that the logical form of the argument encoded by an utterance (however fragmentarily or incompletely) is sufficient as a cue directing the hearers to th...

According to Dascal (1998), controversy is characterised by a special kind of rationality, one result thereof being the unique contribution of this kind of polemics to the growth of knowledge. This, in turn, implies that complete cooperation may be detrimental for the efficiency of communication. In this article I discuss the kind of rationality th...

A Pragmatic Analysis of Legal Proofs of Criminal Intent is a detailed investigation of proofs of criminal intent in Israeli courtrooms. The book analyses linguistic, pragmatic, interpretative and argumentative strategies used by Israeli lawyers and judges in order to examine the defendant’s intention. There can be no doubt that this subject is wort...

In this article I analyse linguistic means employed to reconstruct causality in court. Identifying the causal relations that induced the occurrence in reality is particularly important when the mental element of the offence is considered proving criminal intent is showing existence of a causal relation between an intention and a legally prohibited...