Characteristic of legal communication: Addressers of legal acts

Abstract

The author started description of parties to legal communication in a previous article, on addressee of legal documents. In this item author focuses on the addressers of legal documents — those, who formally issue these documents. Summarizing specifics of addressers in different types of communication (norm-establishing and norm-realization) leads to the conclusion that addresser, issuing power acts, remains to be depersonalized comparing to private persons, acting on their own behalf. This could be explained by the legal principle that power belongs to an authority or to an official, but not to a certain person. Depersonalizing reaches maximum in the case of a statute. Abstract legislator being implied as an addresser of norm, stays in shadow, and this entails a number of practical problems. Author also concludes that Russian legal theory in fact does not recognize establishing legal norms as communication, finding communicative interaction only in realization of norms. While the will of the addresser (initiating legal consequences) is the content of a message in the legal communication, they are performative utterances (in the terminology of the speech acts theory of J. Austin). These acts do not transmit information, but form speech action. At the same time documents, issuing on behalf of private persons (mostly individuals), are often base on strict templates. Sometimes a person, who is formally the addresser of the document, does not take part in its preparation and even is unable to understand it, therefore the document does not really reflect her or his will, which it formally represents. “Legal personality” of addresser of legal acts could not be a real object for analysis, because in many cases the addresser remains to be an abstract person while the speech of legal documents are so standardized that a few space for individual speech is left.