ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore this hypothesis further by adopting a comparative and cross-lingual perspective. It investigates how the phrase the fact that and its Polish counterpart fakt, że are used in US Supreme Court opinions and Poland's Constitutional Tribunal, respectively. It is argued that the use of fact is highly patterned and judicial writing shows a clear preference for certain phraseological patterns which reflect the epistemic practices inherent in the nature of judicial argumentation. The chapter elaborates on status and stance, two concepts most relevant to the present analysis. The analytical framework adopted in Goźdź-Roszkowski and Pontrandolfo is revisited and refined to establish its suitability between the English and Polish data. The function-based classification of 'fact' in American and Polish data helps to reveal the general similarity suggesting that American and Polish judicial writing is underpinned by essentially the same epistemological assumptions.
