The interface between law and language provides a continuous source of analytical insights, not only for researchers in applied linguistics but also for legal scholars and practitioners, thus offering an opportunity to refine, update and broaden current understanding of the way language is used by the professional legal community for the communication of its main business, i.e. the negotiation of justice.
With this in mind, the 14 chapters included in this volume represent the outcome of a selection and, in many cases, a subsequent re-elaboration of some of the presentations offered at the 1st International Conference on The Language of Law: pulling together different strands and disciplines held between 17 and 19 June 2010 at the Law Faculty of the Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli (Second University of Naples), Italy. The selection was based not only on the quality of the chapters, but also bearing in mind that we intended the focus of research in this volume to be on linguistic issues relating to the various ways in which justice is negotiated in today’s globalized world. In this sense, the contributions constituting this volume are much more than a disparate collection of papers from conference proceedings. By providing a balance of both theoretical as well as applied perspectives on some of the linguistic issues relating to this theme area in academic, professional and institutional contexts, and given the variety of backgrounds and fields of expertise of the contributors, the volume is an attempt to delineate the ‘state of the art’ on the subject of language in the negotiation of justice in the second decade of the 21st century.