Der Kodex des Gesprächs

The „Code of Conversing“ is an attempt to pursue what John Austin, Ronald Searle, Jürgen Habermas and others have identified as “doing things by words”. From a legal standpoint, the freedom of communication is at stake. Any utterance by one person to another is an act in this sense and raises expectations of the parties against each other. Therefore, human communication has to follow certain rules precisely to preserve its free and personal nature. These rules are extra-legal norms, but always had, and must have, a considerable impact on the law. Principles like acting in good faith or applying due care, institutions like democracy, contract or procedural law rely heavily on communication rules, and the law , consisting itself of speech acts, has to be construed methodologically in accordance. Law in action, from its preparation to its application, is an immense sum of speech acts calling for the preservation of free contacts which warrant the creation of trust, indispensable for human relations. Such motives lie behind the rights of free speech and of privacy.