The Objectivity of judicial decisions: a comparative analysis of nine jurisdictions

ENThis book reports on a large study on the cognitive use of the concept of objectivity, as it has been referred to by the courts, in nine legal systems. The legal systems considered were; Brazil, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Romania and the UK. The adopted methodology is the one explained by Langacker’s studies on cognitive grammar and it has been tested in other legal studies. The results of the study confirm Legrand’s idea of prejudices in legal discourse. Prejudices are, according to Legrand, shared cognitive methods that legal practitioners perceive as necessary in a fair and just judicial system. These prejudices (I use the term in its etymological, not in its negative, or acquired, sense) are actively forged, for example, through the schooling process, in which law students are immersed and through which they learn the values, beliefs, dispositions, justifications and the practical consciousness that allows them to consolidate a cultural code, to crystallize their identities and to become professionally socialized. The existence of cultural variations in judicial practices is a relatively uncontroversial idea, yet there is little known about the effects that prejudices might have on the judicial narrative and, as proxy, judicial decision. The study shows that, even at the lexical level, all of the legal systems considered in this study are semantically distinctive and that a series of national prejudices fills general concepts such as objectivity, independence, justice and fairness with their respective functional significance. Acknowledging this range of prejudices has, it could reasonably be argued, direct implications in terms of the implementation of international treaties, the functioning of multinational organisations such as the European Union and the plausibility of large international harmonisation projects.