Law's Metaphors: Interrogating Languages of Law, Justice and Legitimacy

Metaphors are not just figurative expressions that beautify language. In countless topics they often serve as essential linguistic devices to facilitate a deeper conceptual understanding -- including the field of law. In fact, metaphors for and in law have greatly contributed to the ways in which legal concepts, rules and principles are constructed, understood, and deployed. Law’s Metaphors: Interrogating Languages of Law, Justice and Legitimacy presents a series of illuminating essays that reveal how metaphors are utilized in and around legal discourse and texts, across a wide range of literature, and in the popular imagination. Featuring contributions from leading experts in various disciplines, the chapters in this collection show how the use of metaphors in legal language -- giving figurative expression to law as having a “body”, with a “long arm” and blindfolded “eyes”, having “grounds”, “boundaries” and “sources” - has considerable implications both inside and outside of the courtroom. Topics addressed include the relationship between metaphor and analogy in legal reasoning, metaphors of proportionality, metaphors in legal education and scholarship, law itself as a metaphor, and many more. Scholarly and thought-provoking, Law’s Metaphors offers illuminating insights into the prevalence and power of metaphor in the legal arena.