[CfP] Special issue on – The language of judges: exploring the discourse of separate opinions

Journal Calls

Comparative Legilinguistics

The language of judges: exploring the discourse of separate opinions

Guest editors:

Jekaterina Nikitina, University of Milan

Katia Peruzzo, University of Trieste

 

Abstract

Judicial discourse has attracted its fair share of academic attention from a variety of perspectives, and yet, one of its most characteristic realizations remains somewhat understudied. Separate opinions, also known as votum separatum (Goźdź-Roszkowski 2020: 381), are used by judges, at least in certain judicial systems, to convey their individual views on a legal case. Unlike the majority opinion, which represents the official decision of the court, a separate opinion provides standpoints of a single judge or a group of similar-minded judges that diverge from the majority opinion, of those judges “who lost their case in camera” (Bruinsma 2006: 360), and want to disagree, clarify or expand on a particular point.

The discourse of separate opinions is a fascinating terrain for an exploration from a legal linguistics standpoint (Goźdź-Roszkowski 2020; McKeown 2021). It opens a window into the mechanisms of legal argumentation (Goźdź-Roszkowski 2024) and dialogical banter (Garzone 2016; Extebe 2020) between the majority and the minority. Since “dissident judges are not bound by the straightjacket of the majority judgment and its legal validity, [they can] […] express their opinions freely and follow their own convictions” (Bruinsma 2006: 360). Separate opinions are also pragmatically intriguing (Galdia 2022), as they must balance between some open confrontation and considerations of professional politeness (Kurzon 2001; Nikitina 2025, forthcoming) in their evaluative sections. At an international level, these opinions become curious instances of L2 legal rhetoric, as judges working in international courts must formulate their thoughts in the court’s official language(s), frequently different from their native ones.

We invite proposals dealing with but not limited to the following perspectives on separate judicial opinions:

  • Legal discourse
  • Legal argumentation
  • Legal genres
  • Dialogism and polyphony in legal discourse
  • Legal drafting in L2 and legal translation
  • Creativity in legal discourse
  • Legal pragmatics
  • Evaluation and stance

 References

Bruinsma, F. (2006). Les Opinions Séparées Des Juges à La Cour Européenne Des Droits de l’Homme. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 24 (2): 358–362.

Etxabe, Julen. (2022). The Dialogical Language of Law, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 59 (2): 429-515.

Galdia, M. (2022) Foundations of pragmatic Legal Linguistics. Comparative Legilinguistics, 51: 241-278. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/cl.51.2022.11

Garzone, G. (2016). Polyphony and dialogism in legal discourse: Focus on syntactic negation”. In Constructing legal discourses and social practices: Issues and perspectives, edited by G. Tessuto et al., 2–27. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Goźdź-Roszkowski, S. (2020). Communicating dissent in judicial opinions: A comparative, genre-based analysis. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law = Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique, 33(2), 381–401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09711-y

Goźdź-Roszkowski, S. (2024). Language and Legal Judgments. Evaluation and Argument in Judicial Discourse. London-New York: Routledge.

Kurzon, D (2001). The politeness of judges: American and English judicial behaviour. Journal of Pragmatics 33/1: 61–85.

McKeown, J. (2021). A corpus-based examination of reflexive metadiscourse in majority and dissent opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Journal of Pragmatics, 186, 224–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.10.019

Nikitina, J. (2025, forthcoming). Separate opinions. In Nikitina J. Human Rights Discourse: Linguistics, Translation and Genre at the European Court of Human Rights. London-New York: Routledge.

Important dates

  • Abstracts: by January 30, 2025
  • Acceptance/rejection: February 15, 2025
  • Full papers: April 30, 2025
  • Acceptance/rejection: June 15, 2025
  • Publication: September 2025

 Please note that starting in 2025, all publications will require the use of APA 7ed. formatting style. Please prepare your manuscripts strictly according to the instructions in the manual (see: Guidelines). Manuscripts not prepared according to the guidelines will be rejected. For details, please contact the volume editors.

Please send all documents and requests to both jekaterina.nikitina@unimi.it and  kperuzzo@units.it.

For more details, please visit: https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/cl/announcement/view/653