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Vanderbilt Law Review

First Page

1277

Abstract

Drugs. Abortion. Race. War. Dissent. Civil disobedience and disruption. Air, water, noise pollution. The standard fare with which we are assaulted by the daily news. American society is swamped in a sea of questions that appear to defy answer. It is the thesis of this paper that the unanswerability of many social questions persists because of the inadequacy of the thought patterns through which they are approached. These thought patterns fail because they reflect the structure of our language rather than the structure of reality. This thesis is not new; it has been set forth several times in different forms during the last century and is probably widely accepted among linguists and semanticists. But it has never gained currency with those who are most intimately involved in answering the crucial questions confronting society. Probably more than any other single institution or group, the law and lawyers are called upon to deal with such questions. This paper, then, is an attempt to demonstrate as clearly as possible to lawyers and law students the proposition that because of certain characteristics of our language we often do not accurately perceive reality. This point will be made in a discussion of three questions of present interest to society in general and lawyers in particular. These three questions are the illegality of drug use, abortion law "reform," and the legal definition of death. The first problem, much in the news lately, is the criminal prosecution of large numbers of youth for drug use. As the debate over the illegality of drug use continues between youth and the more "established" members of society, increasing numbers of young non- drug-users are becoming thoroughly disenchanted with their elders' responses-responses which are embodied in some of the most arbitrary criminal statutes on the books.

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