Discourse in Legal Contexts: Its Concept, Patterns and Functions

Matrimonio e Famiglia Non Fondata sul Matrimonio (Marriage and Family Not Founded on Marriage)

This article aims to construct the rights and duties of slave- owners in antiquity as part of the socio-historical context of the New Testament. In order to achieve this aim, the primary sources referring to Greek, Roman and Jewish law of slavery will first be described. Three aspects of the law of slavery, namely legal definitions of freedom and slavery, the legal status of slaves, and the rights of slave-owners are investigated in Greek, Roman and Jewish law. Relevant texts from these sources are then identified, analysed and interpreted. The re- sults of this process of analysis and interpretation are used to construct the legal context within which the exhortations directed at slave-owners in the New Testament should be read. We submit that Jewish law provided a sound alternative legal and religious context to the writers of the New Testament addressing Christian slave-owners. This alternative context functioned as a counterweight to the strict legal contexts pro- vided by Greek and Roman law.

Due to the latest technological advancements, AI tools, assistants and chatbots have been used to perform tasks in a variety of domains, including translation. Some researchers and graduate students use ChatGPT, Google Translate, QuillBot, Smartling, and DeepL to translate research articles from Arabic to English for their theses or assignments as AI saves them time and effort. Although AI translation of full texts sounds natural uses good style and sentence structure, there are still contextual and semantic inaccuracies. There is insufficient research on the quality of AI translation of full-text articles from Arabic to English. Therefore, this study explores the problems that AI has in translating polysemes in research articles from Arabic to English. Mistranslated Arabic polysemes in full-text education articles were identified. Data analysis showed that AI has difficulty translating polysemes that have general and specialized meanings and two or more English equivalents (i.e., one to many), such as صدق which has the general equivalent “honesty” and the technical equivalent “validity” used in research; والمحكمون التحكيم are used in legal, sports and research contexts, but AI gave the equivalent used in legal contexts not the one used in an educational contexts. It gave “arbitration” & “arbitrators” rather than “peer reviewing” & “reviewers”. AI translated المنهج المحوري to “axial” instead of “spiral” curriculum. رسالة has 4 meanings in Arabic with 4 English equivalents (thesis, message, mission & letter) depending on the context. Most occurrences of رسالة were translated into “message”, rather than “thesis”. تصورات was translated into “visions” not “models”, خطة > “plan” not “proposal”, لجنة المناقشة > “discussion committee” not “defense committee”. Further mistranslations were given to junior and senior high school grades, الدليل الإرشادي, المادة العلمية, العبء التدريسي and others. It was noted that AI tends to give literal, not conceptual, equivalents to Arabic terms and those used in a particular domain. The study recommends that researchers use AI translation with caution, post-editing the translation, and using the technical terms commonly used in education. Results, causes of AI mistranslations and recommendations for improvement are given.

The political geography of Australian Federal-State relations

First, let us dispel one unseemly insinuation made by McCleary and Meeker (2006) in their response to our article—the notion that because this research was conducted as part of a lawsuit, it is not to be trusted and perhaps not even published, due presumably to some form of conflict of interest. McCleary and Meeker, previously employed by the government of San Diego, are concerned that our research has been funded by plaintiffs bringing a lawsuit against the city. In this suit, the plaintiffs alleged that their right of freedom of speech regarding sexual matters had been abridged in violation of the First Amendment. The research reported in our article was funded by plaintiffs as part of this lawsuit and this is acknowledged. It is agreed among ethicists involved in research of all types that alleged conflicts of interest must be assessed within a specific factual context and not merely presumed to exist in the absence of facts supporting such a conclusion (National Institutes of Health, 2002). The specific context here—research conducted as part of a legal proceeding—renders the work more, not less, credible. Rather than being suspect, as McCleary and Meeker imply, the research conducted in this legal context should inspire greater confidence in the veracity of the study findings than most other situations. As McCleary and Meeker know, we have been required by law to share all data and all written materials associated with our study with city officials. The calls-for-service (CFSs) data used in this study were generated by the city and made available to McCleary and Meeker. Had we been deposed about the study or had the case gone to court (the case was settled) and the findings presented there, we would have been required to present sworn testimony under oath. These features of research within a legal context are arguably more demanding than those associated with most peer-reviewed journals. This said, we do not believe that our findings are methodological artifacts as McCleary and Meeker (2006) claimed. We believe there is ample precedent in the literature for the quasi-experimental design we have employed. Our study is one in a series of studies undertaken by local governments and academics that fail to find adverse secondary effects in the community for commercial enterprises involving sexual speech. McCleary and Meeker’s (2006) reply to our article is an attempt to recast our research in light of questionable statistical procedures and misleading analyses. Specifically, we will address the following problems with their reply: (a) their focus on an unreliable mean difference in CFSs between peep show and control areas illustrates a fundamental error in reasoning with statistics; (b) their application of retrospective power analysis is misleading; (c) they have inappropriately set up a system, wittingly or unwittingly, whereby the government can never lose when attempting to legislate against free speech; (d) their position is logically inconsistent with regard to the use of CFSs as a measure of crime and adverse secondary effects, and they mischaracterize the state of the field regarding the use of CFSs as a valid measure of secondary effects; and (e) their assertion that CFSs have dire consequences for significance tests is based on a set of unjustifiable assumptions.

This study investigated the pragmatic aspects of verbal attacks within Indonesian courtrooms, specifically examining speech acts and their alignment with Grice's maxims. While previous research has explored verbal attacks in legal contexts, this study is expected to fill a gap in the literature by focusing on the pragmatic analysis of speech acts and Grice's maxims in Indonesian settings. Using a qualitative research approach and court transcripts, the speech acts contained in this research were systematically analyzed and categorized based on the type and illocutionary force while scrutinizing their adherence to Grice's maxims. The findings reveal a diverse range of speech acts deployed during verbal attacks, including assertive challenges and veiled accusations, often involving deliberate violations of Grice's maxims. Participants strategically flout maxims, utilizing implicatures to contribute to the confrontational nature of verbal attacks. This study is also expected to advance our understanding of the pragmatic dimensions of verbal attacks in Indonesian courtrooms and to describe the strategic use of language in the legal context. It has the potential to inform legal practice, enhancing comprehension of courtroom communication and promoting more effective and respectful exchanges within the Indonesian legal system.

The focus of this paper is the relationship between regulatory settings and financial analysts’ performance, which is examined by studying the level of shareholder protection and the performance of financial analysts in two countries with different legal origins. By using a newly constructed index to measure shareholder protection, we are able to analyze how changes in shareholder protection over time can affect analysts’ performance. By comparing two countries with different legal traditions (the United Kingdom (UK) and Sweden), we are also able to assess whether the underlying legal origin is an influential factor. The results show that increased shareholder protection improves forecast accuracy in both the UK and Sweden, supporting the idea that stronger shareholder protection regulations improve analysts’ performance whether the legal context is rooted in common law or Scandinavian civil law tradition. The findings also indicate that strengthened shareholder protection decreases forecast dispersion in Sweden and forecast bias in the UK, further supporting the idea that stronger shareholder protection improves analysts’ performance even though the results differed across legal contexts. We did, however, find a substitution effect in both countries: Strengthened shareholder protection makes analysts’ services less valuable to investors, thus leading to a reduction in the number of analysts. Our main conclusion is that changes in shareholder protection affect the performance of analysts irrespective of the country’s legal origin, i.e. common law or Scandinavian civil law. However, legal origin seems to have an impact on the magnitude of analysts’ performance based on changes in shareholder protection.

PurposeThis study aims to use institutional and upper echelons theories to comprehensively investigate the intricate interplay between TMT legal expertise and firms' adaptive strategies in legal contexts, notably within emerging economies. It explores how upper echelons experiences shape opportunistic compliance strategies, impacting value and risk perceptions. Drawing on upper echelons theory, the research probes how TMT legal expertise molds firms’ involvement in significant lawsuits, accounting for influential roles. It scrutinizes TMT’s impact on legal strategies, positing that managerial discretion emerges from environmental factors, organizational attributes and executive traits. The study underscores TMT’s internal incentives and external factors’ interplay, molding strategic legal engagement.Design/methodology/approachTo validate this framework, statistical analysis is performed on data from 2,584 Chinese-listed firms. The data set spans 2010–2015, with 5,713 material lawsuits. Chosen due to reliable institutional-level incentives data from the China Market Index Database, years 2016–2019 are excluded for methodological disparities. Moreover, 2007–2009 is omitted to mitigate the potential financial crisis impact. This study’s 11,272 observations ensure robust empirical exploration, offering insights into the interplay of TMT legal expertise, institutional factors and firms’ legal strategies.FindingsThe study reveals that firms led by executives with legal expertise are more prone to engage in significant lawsuits, indicating strategic use of legal skills. TMT age moderates this, with older teams less likely to engage. TMT tenure’s effect remains unclear due to tenure-risk preference complexity. Institutional factors matter; less legally mature regions reduce managers’ legal risk intention. Results confirm hypotheses and highlight executive human capital’s impact on firms’ legal strategies.Research limitations/implicationsThis study acknowledges contributions while highlighting limitations, including the need for detailed distinctions in lawsuit roles and exploration of heterogeneous TMT power dynamics. Further research is proposed for nuanced power dynamics and comprehensive TMT legal background data. The study advances upper echelons theory by introducing TMT legal expertise as a factor influencing strategic lawsuit behavior. It challenges institutional theory by showing the adaptable legal context, beyond fixed constraints. Moderating factors – group risk attitude and external knowledge – deepen understanding of upper echelons’ impact. Enhanced data collection is encouraged to address limitations and refine findings.Practical implicationsThis study’s implications extend to managerial practices. Firms should acknowledge the dynamic legal system, using TMT legal expertise for strategic legal challenges. Executives should pragmatically approach regulations. While legal professionals enhance compliance, caution is needed in selecting TMT members with legal expertise due to the risk of misusing it for unnecessary litigation, potentially misaligned with financial performance goals.Originality/valueThis study combines institutional and upper echelons theories to explore TMT legal expertise’s impact on firms’ adaptive strategies in emerging economies. It challenges the idea of a universally constraining legal environment and highlights how TMT legal expertise enhances firms’ management of complex legal risks. The research introduces TMT legal expertise as an influencing factor in strategic lawsuits, revealing nuanced relationships between legal contexts and strategic decisions. The findings enrich upper echelons theory, challenge conventional institutional views and identify moderating factors that deepen the understanding of upper echelons’ influence in legal landscapes.

Our approach to the representation of time is based on Dinsmore's theory of knowledge partitioning which factors any piece of knowledge into two components, a context and a description and accordingly distributes the knowledge over multiple knowledge bases called spaces each characterized by its context. Each space is a domain for localized reasoning processes and its context bears strict relationship to other spaces. Since a space is characterized by its context, the legal consistency of a space is a property of its context. Thus we define legal contexts as follows: If f is a propositional function that maps a proposition P into a proposition f(P), we can use f as a legal context if and only if it is entailment preserving i.e., (for all P, Q) f(P & (P—> Q)) —> f(Q). If C is the context of a space s1 with respect to another space s2 then a proposition P true in s1 is equivalent to the proposition C(P) true in s2. This process called context climbing helps retrieve knowledge from one space into another. (Contexts may be temporal or otherwise e.g. “George believes___”, “In 1985___”, “If P then___”, “During the past hour,___” are some legal contexts.) Descriptions having the same context with respect to a space may be stored in the same space. The creation of a unique space with a context C is possible only if the context can be distributed over conjunction, i.e., (for all P, Q) (C(P) & C(Q) —> C(P&Q)). If C is a distributive context then propositions P and Q are stored as P, Q in the unique space referred to by C.The idea of temporal spaces (those defined by temporal contexts) is more general than that of history proposed by Hayes. A temporal space contains propositions true at the corresponding time irrespective of their spatial dimensions. Temporal contexts are more general than the tense operators invented by Prior that map propositions true in the past or future into the present. This is because the knowledge partitioning scheme is not restricted to the four tense operators as contexts but allows any entailment preserving propositional function as a context of a temporal space. This scheme is more advantageous than a system which does not make the structural distinction between contexts and descriptions, for instance Allen's system, because such a system does not consolidate information into units that model possible situations. The proposed representation makes no logical distinction between contexts referring to time instants or intervals. One can reason about each space in isolation and use context climbing to transfer the results of the reasoning process and other information to other spaces. The set of 13 mutually exclusive and exhaustive temporal relations formulated by Allen could serve as some of the temporal contexts, since a temporal context specifies the relation of propositions in a space to those in another space. In this sense, then successive context climbing between spaces is analogous to the transitivity of temporal relations given by Allen. Contexts generalize the idea of temporal relations, as they map a proposition into a world existing at a particular time. This scheme avoids combinatorial problems by focussing reasoning processes on restricted domains and by allowing complex temporal inferences in relatively few steps. It allows one to reason about temporal and atemporal knowledge in an integrated framework. This mode of representation removes a great deal of redundancy in both storage and processing since the common context of all descriptions in a space is stored only once and does not take part in local reasoning in the space.

The author outlines his thesis that legal discourse is a special case of general practical discourse (Sonderfallthese) and develops it as an attempt to cover both the authoritative, institutional, or real and free, discursive, or ideal dimension of legal reasoning. On this basis, he examines the objections raised by Habermas (1996) to the special case thesis. First, he discusses the reduction of general practical discourse to moral discourses (genus proximum problem) holding that the former is a combination of moral, ethical, and pragmatic arguments within the priority of just; second, he examines the objection that general practical arguments change their character or nature when employed in legal contexts (subset and specification problem) and the related problems concerning legal validity and unjust law. He concludes proposing a procedural (opposite to a coherential) integration of general practical arguments in the legal context.

Problem setting. In the Ukrainian scientific space, the issue of differentiating the concepts of “scientist” and “scholar” gains particular significance due to the peculiarities of legal regulation, societal perception of science, and the systemic impact of scientific and technical activities on the country’s economy and development. These two terms are often used synonymously; however, their conceptual differences have important implications for regulating labor relations, grant policies, and the status of scientific workers. In Ukrainian legislation, particularly in the Law of Ukraine “On Scientific and Scientific-Technical Activities,” the term “scientist” is used as a general concept for individuals engaged in scientific research, while “scholar” is more often associated with scientific degrees, titles, and academic status. The problem is particularly relevant for Ukraine due to the low level of funding for science, brain drain, and the ambiguous public attitude towards the role of science in the modern world. The lack of clear delineation between these concepts in the legal and professional spheres complicates the formation of a national strategy for the development of science, as well as the establishment of clear criteria for supporting specific categories of scientific workers. For example, in the international context, there is often a clear distinction between researchers, who engage in applied or experimental studies, and scientists, who primarily work in fundamental research. In Ukraine, this issue remains unresolved and requires both legal and societal discussion. Analysis of recent research and publications in the field of legal and conceptual differentiation of the terms “scientist” and “scholar” in the context of contemporary scientific and technical activities indicates that these issues are actively explored at both international and national levels. In particular, scholars such as P. Robert and A. Rey have focused on the linguistic and legal aspects of these terms in the context of science and technology, investigating the evolution of the concepts of “scientist” and “scholar” in historical and legal contexts. Other researchers, including Duden, have addressed the legal definitions and regulations concerning academic and scientific activities in various countries, and their interconnections with legislation. Overall, it can be concluded that international research is primarily focused on the legal and linguistic differentiation of the concepts of “scientist” and “scholar,” which contributes to a clearer understanding of their roles in contemporary scientific and technical activities at the international level. Purpose of research is to investigate the legal and conceptual differentiation of the terms “scientist” and “scholar” in the context of modern scientific and technical activities, emphasizing their legal regulation and impact on the development of science and technology in Ukraine and beyond. Article’s main body. The differentiation between the terms “scientist” and “researcher” remains a subject of ongoing discussion in both linguistic and legal contexts. While in Ukrainian, the term “вчений” (scientist) originates from the root “вч,” historically associated with knowledge and learning, “науковець” (researcher) is a more recent formation that reflects the professional and functional nature of scientific activity [1]. In the global context, different languages and legal systems approach this distinction with varying degrees of specificity. In English, the terms “scientist” and “researcher” are distinguished based on their scope of application. “Scientist” typically refers to individuals engaged in natural or technical sciences, emphasizing expertise within a particular field. Conversely, “researcher” is a broader term that includes individuals conducting studies across various disciplines, regardless of their level of academic recognition. This approach ensures inclusivity, covering doctoral candidates, earlycareer researchers, and professionals involved in applied research. French terminology exhibits a similar distinction, where “scientifique” encompasses both meanings but requires additional clarifications to define an individual’s role. “Chercheur” corresponds to “researcher” and applies to anyone involved in research activities, irrespective of their scientific domain. Furthermore, hierarchical distinctions such as “professeur” or “directeur de recherche” indicate specific academic or research statuses, demonstrating the French system’s tendency toward contextualizing terms based on professional recognition. Conclusions and prospects for development. The differentiation of terms related to scientific and research activities plays a crucial role in legal and academic discourse. The linguistic and legal distinctions between “scientist” and “researcher” not only reflect cultural and historical differences but also impact the regulatory framework governing scientific work. Future research should focus on standardizing these definitions across international legislation to ensure clarity in scientific and academic communications. Additionally, further comparative legal studies could contribute to refining terminology, enhancing cooperation between researchers and policymakers on a global scale.

When children are interviewed about a prior experience using open-ended questions, the opportunity to draw increases the amount of information they report without decreasing their accuracy. Given that prior research has only included children from middle- to upper-middle class backgrounds, it is not clear whether the technique is effective for children from more challenging backgrounds that are overrepresented in clinical and legal contexts. Here, we examined the effect of drawing on children's verbal reports as a function of the socioeconomic status (SES) of their families. A total of 125 children (5- and 6-year-olds) were recruited from schools with a socioeconomic rating of low-, middle-, or upper-middle class. They participated in a novel event and were interviewed 1 month later. Half of the children were given the opportunity to draw during the interview and half were not. Regardless of SES, drawing increased the amount of information that children reported. Drawing also ameliorated the impact of memory ability on the amount that children reported. Additionally, children from low SES backgrounds were less accurate than were children from higher SES backgrounds and they remained less accurate even when they were drawing. These findings have important implications for interviewing children in clinical and legal contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

“Science and proven experience”: How should the epistemology of medicine inform the regulation of healthcare?

Este estudo tem como objetivo apresentar uma revisão integrativa sobre práticas grupais realizadas em âmbito jurídico, acerca da temática violência, no contexto brasileiro. A revisão foi realizada por meio das bases de dados LILACS, PePSIC, PsycINFO e SciELO, no primeiro semestre de 2017, considerando o período de 2000 a 2016. A partir dos critérios de inclusão e exclusão foram recuperados 16 artigos. Os estudos se caracterizaram como empíricos; foram realizados com vítimas, autores e profissionais que atuam com a temática violência; focaram práticas grupais eficazes em relação a violência no contexto jurídico. Houve indícios de falta de capacitação de profissionais dessa área, em parte da produção analisada. Constatou-se que as configurações grupais podem ser formas eficazes, e adequadas de atendimento no âmbito do judiciário, sendo um recurso disponível para os profissionais, e como forma de tratamento para vítimas e agressores.

The United States has recently seen a religious resurgence. Americans are attending church in larger numbers than ever before, and mass media and popular entertainment are saturated with religious references. Importantly, religion is prominent in legal contexts as well, whether it involves the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, priests on trial for sexual abuse, jurors excused from jury service because of their religion, or judges sentencing criminal defendants to attend church. This chapter provides a thumbnail sketch of the place of religion in American life, explains why we should care about religion's role at trial, comments briefly on empirical issues in researching religion in legal contexts, and gives an overview of the remainder of the book. It also introduces a central theme in the book, namely, the normative and descriptive approaches to the issue. The normative question asks, “To what extent and in what ways should religion matter at trial?” The descriptive question asks “In what ways does religion matter at trial?”