Peter
M. Tiersma
Professor of Law and Joseph Scott Fellow
Contact Information
Phone: (213) 736-1162
Fax: (213) 380-3769
E-mail: peter.tiersma@lls.edu
Website: www.languageandlaw.org
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211
Educational and Professional Background
BA, with distinction, Stanford University, Phi Beta
Kappa
JD, University of California Berkeley, Order of the Coif
PhD, University of California San Diego
Prior to attending law school, Peter Tiersma was named a Fulbright Fellow to the Netherlands and taught linguistics at both University of California San Diego and Miami University of Ohio. While in law school, he was associate editor of the California Law Review. Tiersma served as law clerk to Justice Stanley Mosk of the California Supreme Court. He has held positions the law firms of Pettit & Martin in San Francisco and Price, Postel & Parma in Santa Barbara. Tiersma joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 1990.
Professional Memberships and Activities
Director of International Programs, Loyola Law School
President, International Association of Forensic
Linguists (2005-2007)
Member, California Judicial Council Advisory Committee on Criminal
Jury Instructions (2005-)
Member, Committee of Social and Political Concerns, Linguistic Society
of America (2006-2009)
Member, Panel of Academic Consultants, Black's Law Dictionary (8th
ed. 2004)
Member, California Judicial Council Advisory Committee on Civil
Jury Instructions (2003-)
Member, Editorial Board, Journal of Speech, Language, and Law (2004-)
Presentation, “What is Language and Law? And Does Anyone Care?”
Conference on Language and Law, Heinrich-Heine-Universität,
Dusseldorf, Germany (co-sponsored by UCLA Law School) (May 2006).
Presentation, “Language and the Criminal Law.” Biannual
meeting of the International Association of Forensic Linguists,
Cardiff, Wales (July 2005).
Presentation, “A Brief History of Jury Instructions.” American Judicature Society, mid-year meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana
(March 2005).
Presentation, “The Pragmatics of Police/Suspect Encounters.” Linguistic Society of America annual meeting, Oakland, California
(January 2005).
"The Textualization of Precedent," 82 Notre Dame Law Review 1189 (2007) .
Communicating with Juries: How to Draft More
Understandable Jury Instructions
(National Center for State Courts 2006)
"Some Myths About Legal Language," 2 Law, Culture and Humanities 29 (2006).
"The Language Of Legal Texts," in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd Ed., Keith Brown (ed.), 2006).
Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005) (with Lawrence Solan)
"Language Wars Truce Accepted (with Conditions)," 8 Green Bag 2d 281 (2005).
"Categorical Lists in the Law," in Vagueness in Normative Texts (Vijay K. Bhatia, Jan Engberg, Maurizio Gotti, and Dorothee Heller eds., 2005) .
"Did Clinton Lie? Defining 'Sexual Relations'," 79 Chicago Kent Law Review 927 (2004).
Language on Trial: Linguistics and the Criminal Law ( University of Chicago Press, 2004) (with Lawrence Solan)
"Cops and Robbers: Selective Literalism in American Criminal Law," 38 Law and Society Review 229 (2004) (with Lawrence Solan)
"Hearing Voices: Speaker Identification in American Courts," 54 Hastings Law Journal 373 (2003 ) (coauthored with Lawrence Solan).
"The Language and Law of Product Warnings" in Language in the Legal Process (Janet Cotterill Ed., 2002)
"A Message in a Bottle: Text, Autonomy and Statutory Interpretation," 76 Tulane Law Review 431 (2001)
Legal Language (University of Chicago Press, 1999)Language and the Law, Remedies, Trusts and Wills, World Legal Systems