Durand, Corentin <br/><br/>
Establishing One’s Legitimacy to State the Law. A Study of Prisoner Petitions 

 -  2014.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 35 
<br/><br/> This essay accounts for modes of expression of legal references in petitions sent by prisoners to the Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté (CGLPL). The diversity of the rhetorical operations stating and qualifying legal references offers an opportunity to outline some of the moral constraints faced by socially weakened actors in establishing their own legitimacy for communicating about the law with an administrative entity. According to the way the law itself is characterized (the legal system, the law, my rights), prisoners’ rhetorical strategies change, drawing the contours of a twofold social unworthiness: unworthiness to express the law and unworthiness to present oneself as entitled to any rights.