Let's Skill All the Lawyers: Shakespearean Lessons in Law and Rhetoric

Abstract

Shakespeare's works present intriguing explorations of law and legal theory. They help demonstrate the flaws in command-theory positivism, natural law theory and prediction theory accounts of the law. Shakespeare's works also provide insights into a workable jurisprudence complying with the semiotics of law and its ten inherent restraints (the “semiotic decalogue”). As a semantic enterprise, the semiotics of law necessarily involves rhetoric. Concomitant with Shakespeare’s legal explorations, his works explore rhetorical theory and practice and provide useful lessons in rhetorical success and failure.

Keywords: jurisprudence, Shakespeare, semiotics, semantics, natural law, positivism, rhetoric, philosophy of law, legal theory, legal philosophy