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Page 2
LANGUAGE AND THE LAW
Just Words: Law, Language and Power (University of Chicago Press, $35 hardcover, $13 paperback) makes the effective argument that power is no distant abstraction but an everyday reality. Authors John M. Conley and William M. O'Barr stress that if law fails to live up to its ideals, "the failure must lie in the details of everyday legal practice - details that consist almost entirely of language." The conclusion is that law "displays a deep gender bias in the way it performs such basis tasks as judging credibility and defining narrative coherence." By using examples taken from transcripts of well-known cases, including the William Kennedy Smith rape trial of a few years ago, Conley and O'Barr forcefully demonstrate how clever attorneys can get witnesses to play their language games. "In many vital respects," they argue, "language is legal power." Witnesses lack the power to counteract the devastating effects of language used against them. "The fact that witnesses have no resource parallel to the objections permitted to lawyers further underscores the imbalance of power under which witnesses must face examination." In a chapter discussing mediation, a popular way of solving legal disputes, Conley and O'Barr point out that mediators through language strategies "take advantage of certain social tendencies that contribute to women's relative powerlessness." The forecast is that the increasing popularity of mediation will reinforce that powerlessness. The book argues that patriarchy, a long-standing tradition in law, furthers the interests of men at the expense of women. Laws that appear to be even-handed "still embody a distinctively male point of view," observing that the Bill of Rights is essentially a male document with no female counterpoint. Their conclusion is that law is essentially composed of talk. Men rule the roost in courtrooms. The authors conclude that "a meaningful appreciation of justice requires understanding both the concept of power and the mechanisms through which it is applied." POLAROID'S INVENTOR One of the most innovative scientists of the century was Edwin Land. The inventor of the Polaroid instant camera system was much more than creator of a camera that revolutionized the picture-taking industry. He became an engineer, businessman, philanthropist and statesman. Now his life has been told in an interesting new biography, Insisting on the Impossible (Perseus, $30).
The copyright of the article Other Worlds, Language & Law, Etc. - Page 2 in Contemporary Fiction is owned by . Permission to republish Other Worlds, Language & Law, Etc. - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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