220 Conclusion
the more likely it is that he will have a mistaken conception of what it is he is actu-
ally accomplishing. This is the foundation for Silverstein’s insistence that cultures
as we usually conceive them cannot actually be translated in the usual sense of the
word, because any attempt to explain the meaning of one cultural system in the
language of another involves an inevitable transformation. This is also true of at-
tempts to communicate between disciplines that have very different starting pre-
mises. The more we assume transparency in this situation, the less accurate our
understanding will become. If this is the case, then there is reason to fear much
inaccuracy in legal attempts at translation, because the gap between legal and other
possible frames is not adequately problematized or theorized in standard legal
approaches. To be fair, it’s important to note that social scientists sometimes also
proceed as if it were possible to understand law from the inside, or to communi-
cate with legal professionals, without any real effort at translation—an equally
mistaken approach (although probably without the same social ramifications, given
the very different institutional positions and functions of legal and social science
discourse).
Cultural Invisibility/Dominance and “Neutral” Legal Language:
Law School and Legal Categories in a Democratic State
At a very broad level, this study has outlined a tension between abstract categories
and conceptions of justice, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the demo-
cratic ideals of inclusion that require social, contextual, and grounded moral rea-
soning. When considered in terms of this tension, the problem of cultural invisibility/
dominance in legal training emerges as a profound challenge. There is without ques-
tion a certain genius to a linguistic-legal framework that treats all individuals the
same, in safely abstract layers of legal categories and authorities, regardless of so-
cial identity or context. And the framework is still more powerful because of its
ability to gobble up contextual details from each particular case, run them through
a purportedly neutralizing filter of analogy and doctrine, and reach results that are
at once guided by rules and yet that also are always changing those rules through a
shifting ground of constructed facts. At the same time, this process conceals the
ways legal results are often quite reflective of existing power dynamics, while si-
multaneously pulling lawyers away from grounded moral judgment and fully
contextualized consideration of human conflict. This can produce an ongoing
alienation: of legal decision making from ethics and of lawyers from socially shared
values. The legal system itself, while purporting to serve all citizens equally, can
hide behind the screen provided by its legal-linguistic filter, concealing even from
itself the way that inequities are integral to its structure. There is no easy or quick
fix to solve this dilemma; professors cannot cease teaching their students the epis-
temological-linguistic frame they will need to use in practice. Clearly, however, to
confront the problem we need the kind of understanding that research such as that
presented in this book can provide.^50 And, as Burns has eloquently argued, there is
ground for hope that some counterbalance can be achieved through other kinds
of legal discourses: the blend, for example, that is found in the trial, or in the more