About the Author

Lawrence M. Solan is the Don Forcelli Professor of Law and director of the Center for the Study of Law, Language and Cognition at Brooklyn Law School. Peter M. Tiersma is professor at Loyola University Law School. They are the authors, respectively, of The Language of Judges and Legal Language, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"Speaking of Crime deepens our understanding not only of how language and cognition work in the legal system, but also of the nature of erroneous judgments and wrongful convictions in the American criminal justice system. Solan and Tiersma's analysis advances our understanding of how to achieve the system's most fundamental goals--improving the fairness of legal procedures while better separating the innocent from the guilty. This book deserves therefore to be read not only by linguists and criminologists, but also by judges and policy makers."--Richard Leo, Department of Criminology, University of California, Irvine

"Speaking of Crime introduces insights drawn from linguistics and psychology-of-language research that throw light on a number of issues in our criminal process. It does an excellent job of synthesizing and reviewing the relevant literature and sets out interesting 'true crime' case illustrations of the lessons to be learned from the science of language, many of which have yet to be properly taken into account by the legal process."--Michael Risinger, Seton Hall Law School

"Speaking of Crime is an engaging, insightful and gracefully written tour of how language and cognitive psychology influence criminal law doctrine and practice. It belongs in the library of anyone who teaches, studies, or practices criminal justice."--Jerome H. Skolnick, Center for Research on Crime and Justice, New York University School of Law

"An important book in the emergent field of language and the law, Speaking of Crime is essential reading for everyone whose interests intersect these areas: judges, attorneys, legal scholars, and sociolinguists. Solan and Tiersma look at a large number of important cases--from the Lindbergh kidnapping to the Clinton impeachment--to argue that a more sophisticated understanding of the workings of language by the professionals involved might have created very different, and more just, outcomes. Their discussion of the ways in which linguistic analysis affects our understanding of rights, crimes, and verdicts should be read by everyone."--Robin Lakoff, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley