National identity and law in the context of European integration: the case of Denmark

Abstract

Nationalistic discourse is often associated with the flag waving of popular culture, political views of extremist right-wing parties or the routine rhetoric of `us' versus `them', pervading social life in general. However, nationalistic discourse is to be found even in academic writings by the professional elite of lawyers, who readily resort to ideological topoi of national identity and culture to support legal argument. Reporting from a comprehensive study on Danish academic and public debate on European human rights law, this article explores how the legal community of Denmark reacts emotionally and ideologically to legal integration in Europe. It is argued that the somewhat heated debate reflects points of instability within the social class of Danish jurists, who are engaged in a hegemonic struggle to construct or sustain positions of power within a national legal system under radical change.

Analyzing Legal Drafting: Legal Discourse Study on Crimes against Women in Pakistan

“…The distinct personal language styles of judges and lawyers differ from academic or impersonal writing styles, further complicating CDA in this context. Limited research contributes to CDA in law, with notable exceptions like the work of Kjaer & Palsbro (2008) on legal and media discourse in Danish courts. Despite a scarcity of critical research on legal language, related fields such as socio-legal studies and anthropology have explored language use in law.…”

Nature, modernity, and diversity: Swedish national identity in a touring association’s yearbooks 1886–2013

“…Following the Critical Discourse Studies tradition, research on how national identity in contemporary Europe is constituted has been made within various contexts, including the media (Costelloe, 2014;Li, 2009;Şahin, 2011), political discourse (Henderson & McEwen, 2005;Jensen, 2014), law discourse (Kjaer & Palsbro, 2008), royal speeches (Demiri & Fangen, 2018) and focus group discussions (Clary-Lemon, 2010). National identity has also been studied from a historical perspective, analysing certain historical epochs, i.e.…”

Design and manufacture of products with Romanian cultural identity

“…(Brubaker and Cooper, 2000). The issue of cultural identity has become an increasingly important topic in recent years, especially in the European context, due to the need to legitimize European cultural identity as a link between European citizens and as a unifying principle of different cultural heritage (Kjaer and Palsbro, 2008;Antonsich, 2008).…”