In search of "Multisensory Law": Four Theses

Peter Ebenhoch

Dear Dr. Brunschwig,

many thanks for your response to my comment about multisensory law from December 2010! Many thanks also for providing more insights by publishing your article in the Festschrift Schweighofer. I will take it into account as soon as I have access to it.

For the time being please allow me to bring up four focused theses which shall enable us to concentrate our discussion. I already started to elaborate the expressed arguments in an article. There I will also add references -- which I omitted here for better readability -- and take your article into consideration, too.

And here are my arguments:

1.    Unlike other compound notions like “civil law”, “criminal law” etc. “multisensory law” does obviously not deal with legal normativ issues (laws, bills, judgements etc.) in its own domain.

The reason is, that a specific domain of legal provisions dealing with “multisensory law” is missing.

2.    Additionally it is not even thinkable that such a domain of multisensory law consisting of “usual” legal bills and laws comes into existance.

The reason: It is and ever was the primal business of law to arrange and shape social happenings and relations including and taking into account all possible sensory impressions man is capable of: What else should law deal with than that what is perceivable via the human senses?  

In that sense all law is dealing with multisensory aspects of live! But this insight leads to the lack of any necessary selectivity, so that the notion “multisensory law” gets arbitrary.

Law does also not need to make a distinction whether a crime is committed verbally or not-verbally, as the posting „Betrugsversuch durch nonverbale Kommunikation“ suggests: It is self-evident that tactile action, even as omission is covered by the elements of deception as type of crime. The case presented can be solved simply by applying effective criminal law without any detour. There is no need manifest to establish “multisensory law” to solve this case or just relieve the finding of a solution.

Law uses – for good reasons – language as medium of communication, but this does in no way restrict itself to deal only with verbal phenomenas as subject matter.

3.    “Multisensory law” is not necessary to enable the legal system to deal with multisensory impressions.

The reason is that the assignment of sensory impressions into the legal system is already dealt with by means of the procedural law: E. g. witnesses and authorized experts can be interviewed. Thus law and the legal system are capable to deal with all kind of sensory impressions sufficiently.

Obviously these mechanisms had and have to be adjusted to deal with new technical developments (like capturing testimonies on video, etc.). Despite some discussions how to cope with these developments in a best way, the resulting adjustment of laws seems to be pretty sufficient. Therefore the challenge seems to be not so weighty that it is necessary to dedicate a whole new scientific branch to deal with this group of questions.

4.    It seems not very promising to deal with the asserted “current verbocentric malaise” of law using language, also. As long as “multisensory law” sticks with language to articulate itself it’s language related criticism appears not well founded and a methodical novelty is missing.

The reason is, that communication is the constituting root of law and science and not all senses entail corresponding options to communicate in a robust and reproducable manner like the visual and auditiv senses in combination with language. Thus language is despite it’s limitations not for nothing the communication medium of choice for law and science.

This results in the insight that tactile-kinesthetic or olfactory-gustatory law principally won’t make any sense at all. These pure passive sensations miss any option to communicate about them as adequately as using language. (Wittgenstein’s saying comes to mind: “Worüber man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.”)

The notion “multisensory” originates from the educational and from the marketing domain (“multisensory enhancement”). As I cannot find an appropriate subject matter and a new methodology it seems nearby to label it’s presumable incitement as “multisensory legal education and intermediation of law”, at least if this is what is meant by its initiators.

Admittedly the question arises for me, why do we need a new and to a certain extend obfuscating notion at all, when we already have covered the topics of legal theory, legal semiotic, legal didactic and visual aids to relieve legal communication in their own domain?

As mentioned above I am looking forward to test the arguments you offer in your article against my theses presented here.

To relieve discussion I would also highly appreciate if you could add answers relating to the eleven questions you deposited in each branch of multisensory law on the communication platform, as far as they are accessable to you so far.

Best wishes and kind regards,
Dr. Peter Ebenhoch

PS: Please note that I did definitely NOT refer to „multimedia law“ in my former posting! This is crucial! I referred in my posting to the multimediality of law.

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