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Nobody ever raised the question about who was the initiator of semiotics of law. The chapter answers that question and researches contextual critical approaches. The first forty or so publications on legal semiotics appeared under the name: "significs" in the social and scientific context of the Amsterdam Signific Circle between 1915–1925, in Dutch written by the jurist Jacob Israel de Haan. Semiotic features functioning in theory and practices of law are from there on outlined in relation with two distinguishable semiotic traditions, a West-European and a North American. These traditions are based on different views on human relations, in which interpretations of the human face play a dominant and trans-cultural role—even with regard to justice. Semiotic approaches focus, via the CLS themes, on the one hand on law and politics, on the other on a lawyer's words and their meanings.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-5458-4_7

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