Semiotics is derived from a Greek root meaning "observation of signs." Modern day semiotics is a study of the interpretation of signs. Semioticians have now infiltrated legal education. [See Jeremy Paul, The Politics of Legal Semiotics, 69 Tex. L. Rev. 1779 (1991) (Outlining the political dimension of the theories, techniques, and practitioners of legal semiotics)] Jack Balkin has outlined in several law review articles how one makes use of legal semiotics to understand legal argument. [See e.g., J.M. Balkin, The Hohfeldian Approach to Law and Semiotics, 44 U. Miami L. Rev. 1119, 1131 (1990). Balkin links his work to that of Duncan Kennedy. (p. 1131). For Kennedy's legal semiotics, see, Kennedy, Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, 89 Harv. L. Rev. 1685 (1976). For another explanation of Balkin's approach to legal semiotics, see J.M. Balkin, The Crystalline Structure of Legal Thought, 39 Rutgers L. Rev. 1 (1986). Balkin observes that "[w]hat one discovers, then, when one studies the forms of legal discourse, is that the basic styles of argument do not vary as one moves from one set of rule choices to another." (Balkin, The Hohfeldian Approach to Law and Semiotics, supra, at 1131). "Most lawyers are well aware that facts can be recharacterized to support one side of a lawsuit or another. What is more remarkable is that styles of characterization and recharacterization recur in legal discourse in relatively standard and predictable forms that can be catalogued and analyzed." J.M. Balkin, The Rhetoric of Responsibility, 76 Va. L. Rev. 197, 198 (1990)]

In "The Rhetoric of Responsibility," Balkin sets out to demonstrate how "many of the most rhetorical devices concerning human responsibility come in sets of opposing pairs, with each opposed device a transformation of the other. The rhetoric of human responsibility thus displays its semiotic or linguistic character; for language, and indeed, any system of signs, can be shown to be structured in a system of mutually self-defining relations." [200]

(i) If Balkin is right, we might map out the semiotics of moral discourse for lawyers by articulating the "sets of opposing pairs" of arguments about professional responsibility. Since most of our assumptions about professional responsibility and the moral life of lawyers is implicit we may find some obstacles to engaging in this exercise of exhumation. Balkin points out that we are often unconscious about our use of language but this fact "does not preclude others from learning the language by consciously practicing these constructs; nor does it preclude the native speaker herself from learning more about her own language...." [200] What we have set out to do here is learn something about the language of moral discourse. Balkin argues that "it is quite possible to identify the 'deep structures' of argument about human responsibility and to practice them consciously." [201]

(ii) Balkin sets out three reasons for the study of a semiotics of human responsibility:

First, we can use these structures to make our arguments more convincing, and we can identify them in the arguments of others to analyze and rebut their arguments. If your opponent makes her position seem stronger by cleverly manipulating time frames and descriptions of causality, it is certainly a valuable skill to be able to identify these rhetorical moves and turn them on their heads. Thus, a semiotics of human responsibility is clearly relevant to the study of legal rhetoric in general and, hence, to the goal of persuasive advocacy.

. . . [A]n important reason to study these structures of argument is to discover important features of our legal and political ideology. Ideological thinking can be distinguished by the way in which it characterizes issues of human responsibility and desert. The success of an ideology consists precisely in its ability to make its assumptions seem natural or transparent to the mind. Thus, the study of the semiotics of responsibility is important to anyone who wants to understand how ideologies work in general and how ours work in particular.

Finally, a semiotics of responsibility has a therapeutic value. Once we see that existing views of human responsibility are merely constructs that are alternatively adopted and discarded in successive situations, we will understand that they are not necessary concomitants of the concepts of moral responsibility and desert. Thus, articulating the interpretive constructs in moral and legal discourse about human responsibility, making what is unconscious conscious, may have an enlightening effect; it may help us to understand legal and moral issues in a new way." [201]

Can similar claims be made for a semiotics of a lawyer's moral responsibility?

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