Juri Lotman's Cultural Semiotics on Law: On some parallels between Tartu-Moscow cultural semiotics and the current scholarly developments in semiotics of law

This thesis seeks to demonstrate the existence of possible affinity between the current scholarly developments in legal semiotics and the cultural semiotics of Tartu-Moscow semiotic circle by setting out some ?parallels?, both in the methodological apparatus and the re-conceptualization of ?legal discourse?. The structure of this thesis has been reflected in a passage from the historical introduction into the development of that may be called Tartu-Moscow ?legal semiotics? (Chapter 1), through discussing the different notions of legal system (Chapter 2,3,4) and general questions of the current legal theory (Chapter 5,6,7), towards the paticular problems of legal hermeneutics and contractual interpretation (Chapter 8).