An Approach to the Study of Public Law: A Pragmatic-Discursive Analysis of Judicial Decisions in Spanish and English

Abstract

Despite the presence of some work on genres in the area of private law, less attention has been paid to the genres of public law (mainly case law and legislation) in comparative studies of legal discourse in English and in Spanish. The present study tries to prove that the analysis and description of judicial decisions in both languages depends on cultural factors underlying the asymmetry between the Spanish legal system, and that of England and Wales, where precedent has an unequal prominence as a source of law. Through a qualitative analysis of a limited corpus of judgments of the English and Spanish Supreme Courts, I will attempt to reveal how well they reflect the preponderance attributed to precedent in each of the legal cultures emanating from such texts.