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47 Commw. L. Bull. 1 (2021)

handle is hein.journals/commwlb47 and id is 1 raw text is: Commonwealth Law Bulletin, 2021 Routledge Vol. 47, No. 1, 1-36, https://doi.org/10.1080/03050718.2021.1881242 Taylor& Francis Group The faces of justice: a study of the interpretation of emoji messages in the court process Michael A. Crystal, Brad Ververs and Maria Khan* Faculty of Law Common Law Section, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada As emojil become more commonplace in courtroom proceedings, a question arises: what role do emoji play in social media messaging? The author draws a comparison between oral communication and social media messages and concludes lawyers have been too quick to treat text and emoji as a bun- dle when they should be adopting a piecemeal approach. While emoji may add context and clarity to social media messages that might otherwise appear ambiguous; emoji interpretation is far from an exact science. By exploring linguistic, gesture, and non-verbal communication theory, the author intends to discuss the tension that exists when it comes to decipher- ing the meaning of online communications - that include emoji - in court proceedings. While there is a tendency to conflate emoji with text in linguis- tic and non-verbal communication theory, a proper evidentiary analysis requires a piecemeal approach. To permeate these dynamics, the author has researched Canadian, U.K, Australian, and New Zealand case law over the period 2015 to 2020 where emoji were referenced in court decisions. The paper focuses on the treatment of emoji by the courts in these cases. Finally, the paper reviews the relevant legal issues and concludes with a consideration of whether the existing laws relating to electronic documents ought to be reformed to accommodate the admissibility of emoji messages in court proceedings. 1. Introduction In 1798, Napoleon was on campaign in Egypt. As his forces approached the small town of Rosetta, 35 miles east of Alexandria, one of his artillery offi- cers came across a four-foot slab of black basalt.2 The slab, now known as the Rosetta Stone, had three languages on it, including the hitherto undeci- phered ancient Egyptian pictorial language known as hieroglyphics.3 Using the other two languages to decode the pictographs on the stone, Demotic and Greek, a French Egyptologist named Jean-Francois Champollion *Corresponding author. Email: mcrystal@crystalcyrlaw.com 'For the purposes of this paper, the author has determined to use the term emoji to denote both the singular and plural versions of the word. 2E.A. Wallis Budge, The Rosetta Stone 1-2 (2016) See also History.com Editors, This Day in History: July 19, HISTORY (July 27, 2019), https://www.history.com/this-day-in- history/rosetta-stone-found. 31d. 0 2021 Commonwealth Secretariat

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