Book chapter
Zorkin v. Morschakova: Legal Dispute in Rhetorical Terms
The chapter examines the academic dispute in newspapers between two legal scholars on details of the judicial reform in Russia in terms of rhetoric.
In book
Existence of the problem of “the protester” within the legal political discourse serves as a proof of a constant human strive towards broadening of their civil rights and liberties. The degree of these liberties directly depends on the definition of the political regime and the existing legal system that motivates a person to broaden their liberties, as well as serving as a form of repression that limits the rights and liberties of a person.“The protester” is viewed differently within various legal discourses, which testifies of the existing difference in perception of the subject of liberty that pertains to the diversity of the cultural, political and legal traditions.The author tends to believe that the image of “the protester”, as the society’s right to liberty and demonstration of a protest is differently legitimized by one or another cultural tradition, which reflects in the amount of their rights and liberties that are allocated to them by the legal discourse.The forming of a certain tendency for protest, its technologies and aesthetics completely depends on the definition of the political regime that formulates specific requirements for the format of liberty within the framework of legal discourse.
The paper is related to analysis of compensatory function of legal myths using example of legal efficiency and legal effectiveness myths.
The book’s main objective is developing academic writing and speaking skills, namely teaching students to write an academic paper and to prepare an oral presentation on its basis. The book is mainly intended for undergraduate and graduate students of the faculty of law of Higher School of Economics. However, it can be also used by students of other specializations due to the fact that basic principles of academic writing and presenting are universal.
“Academic English for Legal Research” is divided into two parts. The first part “Writing a paper” contains seven units, each devoted to a particular part of an academic paper (abstract, introduction, literature review etc.). The second part “Transforming a paper to an oral presentation” consists of two units devoted to PowerPoint and poster presentations, correspondingly. The book is also provided with additional materials: information about annual conference for law students organised by the department of foreign languages of Higher School of Economics, questionnaire, project title page and contents templates, and samples of projects’ chapters.
Each unit contains both theoretical information and practical exercises. The theory is presented in a concise form, so that students can use the book as a manual for paper writing and presenting. For more information students are encouraged to use additional resources, to which links are provided in every topic. The theoretical part of the book aims at dethroning traditional stereotypes and prejudices of Russian students considering academic writing in English as well as making them aware of typical mistakes that were identified during several years of teaching a variety of Academic English courses in Higher School of Economics. Such a focus on Russian students makes the book different from those published by British and American authors and helps to bridge the gap between Russian and English academic writing conventions.
Practical exercises are based on the material of academic articles from legal journals and fourth year students’ projects that were completed by law students of Higher School of Economics as a part of their final state examination in English in 2015. The tasks are aimed at recognizing and using both the academic vocabulary and structural principles of academic paper creation and presentation. The exercises comprise such tasks as identifying strong and weak sides of given samples, correcting mistakes, different matching activities, creative tasks. The last task of each unit suggests students to write a part of their own research and provides a checklist of points to consider while writing, thus, after studying the book students should be able to present a draft of their research work.
The book can be used both in class and individually. It can be suggested as an additional course book for fourth year students to help them prepare for their English examination.
In my paper I will analyze decisions of the Russian Constitutional Court and courts of general jurisdiction, in which they interpret ordinary and seemingly unambiguous words and phrases. In a number of cases this interpretation is made in a manner, which is suspect from a linguistic point of view. The analysis shows that there is no consistency in the application by Russian courts of the ‘‘plain language’’ rule and that literal interpretation may be used selectively as a means of legitimizing the decisions made on non-linguistic grounds. Though literal interpretation can be often incompatible with the concept of justice and therefore judges should also take into account other criteria, there are examples of court decisions, in which literal interpretation would have been more appropriate from the perspective of justice, separation of powers and human rights. The article shows how use and misuse of language by judges is employed as a tool in judicial decision-making.
The book comprises the articles about legal methodology and new developments in understanding of law and its tools of art.