Conflicts between Legal Professionals and Art Professionals: Textual Travel and Expertise

Abstract

This paper examines the underlying causes of conflicts between legal professionals and art professionals in legal settings. Previous studies have schematized such conflicts using abstract concepts such as habitus and power, but concrete mechanisms have yet to be elucidated. In this study, analysis of art professionals’ testimonies and legal professionals’ arguments in an obscenity trial in Japan revealed that a conflict arose because the legal professionals re-described the art professionals’ testimonies by using legal expertise. Thus, analyzing art professionals’ methods of constructing arguments and legal professionals’ methods of re-describing those arguments may reveal important details of how such conflicts can arise in the legal setting.