Metaphors in English for Law: Let Us Keep Them!

Abstract

A large number of legal concepts is expressed through metaphors, exemplifing the Conceptual Metaphor Theory created by Lakoff & Johnson. Indeed, the law often resorts to metaphors in order to allow us to understand an abstract and/or unknown concept in terms of another that is concrete and/or familiar (the metaphor of the “living tree” to describe some aspects of the Canadian constitution is a case in point). The law itself is often compared to an object (“to break the law”, “a law breaker”) or to a person (“Our Lady the Common Law”, “the arm of the law”, “the eye of the law”). What is more, some metaphors have allegedly contributed to developing new legal concepts (for instance the metaphor of “the golden thread” was used to evoke the then new notion of the presumption of innocence in Canada).However, though it cannot be denied that metaphors are useful to shed light on legal concepts, the interpretation of the latter is necessarily biased because the compared concept is always circumscribed to the comparing concept which, besides, tends to present the interpretation as the only possible one. This way, some metaphors can be used as manipulative tools.Finally, the cognitive function of metaphors may be limited: on the one hand, some metaphors may remain obscure even to the native speaker (“blue sky law”, “thin skull doctrine”), on the other hand, others may be misleading either because they are ambiguous or because they suggest (impose?) one vision of the world that excludes all the others.