Strike That! Metaphors of the Law By Jennie Bricker As lawyers, we deal in the currency of the written and spoken word. Indeed, language is our stock and our trade, the set of tools we employ to interpret the law and to construct an argument. Our ability to communicate about the law gives us both our power and our identity, includ- ing an exclusivity that may be unique to the legal profession: In what other occupation do the members of a profession divide the world into “us” and “them” — “lawyers” and “nonlawyers”? 1 Fee-sharing with non-architects? The delivery of plumbing services by non-plumbers? Medical research guidelines for the non-doctor? “These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears...” —Hamlet, Act III, Scene 4 iStock Common wisdom has it that, going about in the physical world, one is never more than eight feet from a spider. Similarly, skipping around in the world of language, we are never more than 25 words away from a metaphor. 2 Adept at using language, skilled at reasoning by analogy, lawyers in particular enjoy an attach- ment to the figurative. Cognitive linguists use the terms target and source to signify the two components of a metaphor. In “these words are daggers,” 3 words is the target and daggers the source. We pepper our sen- tences with these pairings, for the sake of eloquence, to refine un- derstanding, or to indulge in a subtle but effective bit of rhetoric. Indeed, metaphors may represent our only “cognitive access” to some targets, especially big, important concepts: “Life is a jour- ney.” 4 “[Love] is the star to every wandering bark.” 5 In the law, we frequently use metaphors and other figurative language as rhetorical devices — not only to describe, but to per- suade. In a more fundamental sense, however, metaphors are the substance of legal reasoning, so that “the very concepts and cat- egories of the law are shot through with metaphors.” 6 Thus there are metaphors of law — figurative constructions that permeate its concepts and the connections between concepts — and there are metaphors about the law. 7 An example of the latter is a phrase often attributed wrongly to Shakespeare: “The law is a ass.” Actu- ally, Charles Dickens penned those words, in Oliver Twist: “The law is a ass — a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bach- elor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.” Metaphors may represent our only cognitive access to some big, important concepts. JULY 2016 • OREGON STATE BAR BULLETIN 27