Theories of Categorization: A Case Study of Cheques

Hamilton, Jonnette Watson

doi:10.1017/s082932010000702x

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The above statement has a universal appeal, as proved by numerous previous legal analyses employing the prototype theory to various theoretical as well as practical issues (see for example :Winter 2001;Hamilton 2002;Paul 2002;Solan 2010;Osenga 2011;Smith 2011). However, there are reasons to claim that the prototype theory may be particularly useful in the context of EU law.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Prototype Theory in the Judicial Practice of the Court of Justice of the European Union. A Case Study

Zeifert

2020

Comparative Legilinguistics

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Prototype theory is a semantic theory according to which the membership of conceptual categories is based not on a list of criterial features, but rather on the similarity to the most representative member of the category. Consequently, conceptual categories may lack classical definitions and rigid boundaries. This article supports the claims, already made by other scholars working in the field, that prototype theory may greatly augment our understanding of legal (i.e. statutory, judicial) interpretation. Legal provisions are traditionally written as classical definitions, but they are rarely applied that way. Statutory concepts tend to be interpreted with a great deal of flexibility, using a wide array of extra-textual factors. This is especially true for the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which has to deal with the challenges of the multilingual, supranational law of the European Union.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Prototype Theory in the Judicial Practice of the Court of Justice of the European Union. A Case Study

Zeifert

2020

Comparative Legilinguistics

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“…There have been numerous successful applications of the notions of graded membership and fuzzy borders to various problems of the theory of law and legal practice (see i.e. [18,26,36,37,41]). However, none of them have included the notion of basic level categorisation.…”

Section: Basic Level Categorization: An Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Basic Level Categorisation and the Law

Zeifert

2022

Int J Semiot Law

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This article probes the usefulness of the notion of basic level categorisation for legal theory. Basic level categorisation is the central part of the vertical dimension of Eleanor Rosch’s prototype theory. It addresses the question about the various levels of abstraction at which humans can categorise the world. Extensive anthropological, psychological and linguistic research has proven that there is a preferable level of abstraction, namely the basic level, at which primary categorical cuts of the perceived world are made. Three areas of legal theory are identified when applying these findings. The first is the area of visualisation of legal rules. The notion of basic level categories addresses some of the known problems of discrepancies between the visualisation of a rule and its verbal description. The second is the area of statutory interpretation. Many famous cases of interpretive doubts are resolved around superordinate categories in statutory language. Categories of this level of abstraction are less contrastive than basic level categories, thus resulting in more potential for borderline cases and more reliance on functional methods in their classification. The third is the area of legislative drafting. The way in which the law categorises the world often invalidates two principles of categorisation identified by Rosch, namely cognitive economy and perceived world structure. In order to successfully enhance the comprehensibility of legal texts, it is necessary to go beyond the purely linguistic level and address the problem of legal categorisation.

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“…One particularly important (and rarely reflected on) technology for legal bracketing is categorisation. The category provides legal technicians with a tool for the apprehension of reality, the identification of problems and their resolution, and an instrument through which to think, such that ‘the primacy of categorization in legal reasoning would be hard to overestimate’ (Hamilton , 116). Just as the territory does more than delineate an already existent set of distinctions, but helps make those distinctions stable and real, so categories help constitute and stabilise the world (Abbott ; Lakoff ).…”

Section: Bracketingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ties that blind: making fee simple in the British Columbia treaty process

Blomley

2014

Trans Inst British Geog

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Property is a crucial means by which space is made, and remade. This is powerfully evident in settler societies, such as British Columbia, Canada. To understand the work that property does requires us to attend to the manner in which it is entangled in and constitutive of a multitude of relations (ethical, practical, historical, semantic and so on). Yet for property to function, some of these relationships must be bracketed. That which is designated as inside a boundary must be partly disentangled from that identified as outside. Property practice and theory helps organise these exclusions. Yet this is not disinterested: Property's frames, therefore, can become political battle lines. Drawing from a modern-day treaty process involving indigenous communities and the federal and provincial governments in British Columbia, Canada, I trace the ways in which the state has sought to disentangle property from its recently re-emergent colonial entanglements. One of the ways in which it has tried to do this is to insist that First Nations hold their treaty settlement lands as a form of fee simple, this being bracketed as a clear and certain entitlement, replacing a messier ' Aboriginal title'. First Nations negotiators, however, have pushed back, reentangling fee simple in culture, politics and place. I explore the performative use of categorisation on the part of the Crown in their attempt at re-framing fee simple as 'simple'. Apart from documenting this understudied postcolonial moment, I also encourage geographers to recognise the important work that property does in making space. To do so, I theorise property as an effect, performed through multiple technical and categorical enactments. The spaces of propertyWhen we assume that our clefts and bunches represent fixed separations and collections in rerum natura, we obstruct rather than aid our transactions with things. (Dewey 1922, 92) The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).

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Theories of Categorization: A Case Study of Cheques

Cited by 11 publications

References 15 publications

Prototype Theory in the Judicial Practice of the Court of Justice of the European Union. A Case Study

Prototype Theory in the Judicial Practice of the Court of Justice of the European Union. A Case Study

Basic Level Categorisation and the Law

The ties that blind: making fee simple in the British Columbia treaty process

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