Introduction: law as a strategical system of fluctuating signs
Résumé
Law is a phenomenon that appears as words in legislation, as words uttered in court, or as words collected in constitutions. Yet, law is more than words. Law can be seen through signs and symbols that represent a legalized sense of everyday life. The legal semiotic is a richly conceptualized materiality of law insofar as the reception of what is seen becomes a source of law in action. Even in the absence of the spoken word, law takes on a variety of shapes and inhabits a variety of spaces and spatialities. The Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics provides insight into how law works through more than thirty different chapters examining a distinct contribution to the international field of legal semiotics. With a range of scholars representing more than eighteen countries from the global north, south, east, and west, Editors Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek invite readers to explore the dynamic dimensionalities of law found in legal semiotics. The rich body of legal scholarship in this volume visually represents law through the signs, symbols, and materialized manifestations of cultural, political, and social understandings of the everyday legality found throughout the world.