 The importance of Roman law  Latin in European culture  Latin – universal language of lawyers  Latin in Canon Law  Latin in modern legal languages  Communication value of legal Latin

 Latin – lingua franca between diverse populations of the Empire  Byzantine Empire – Greek  The boundary between the zones of dominance of these languages ran from north to south along the centre of the Empire: it crossed the Balkans and ran along the eastern side of the territories of today’s Tunisia

 In Western Europe, Roman law as a coherent legal system disappeared with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476  Maintained at a very high level in the Byzantine Empire 530’s Emperor Justinian codified this law: Corpus iuris Civilis: basis of ius commune, founded on a logical system of concepts

 Ius comune – common to countries of continental Europe  Lawyers from continental Europe (and some other countries) speak the same conceptual language

 With the downfall of the Roman Empire, written culture grew weak, and Germanic tribes settled on the western territories of the former Empire  Latin as a spoken language moved further and further away from classical Latin (spoken language already diverged from the written language in Imperial times)

 Thanks to Catholic church, Latin retained its position in medieval Europe as the dominant written language  After the fall of the Roman Empire – written Latin was of poor quality  Carolingian Renaissance (reform of the school system by Charlemagne at the end of 8th c.) raised the level of written Latin

 In the Middle Ages – literary works written in Latin; it is estimated that the number of medieval works in Latin was 50 times greater than that of works in Latin during Antiquity

 From the end of the Middle Ages – scientific progress, technical inventions  Printing  Science- produced in Latin: “an ocean of Latin literature”; foundations of modern science – cast in neo-Latin (Kepler, Newton, Galvani, Linnaeus, et al.)

 During the Middle Ages, Latin became transformed stylistically and grammatically, moving closer to Romance languages; medieval authors made use of prepositions and subordinate clauses more often then authors of Antiquity  As a reaction, Humanist scholars restored the style and grammar of classical Latin, by imitating the Latin authors of Antiquity  Latin became more difficult

 Restoring the stylistic and grammatical canons of the Latin of Antiquity brought about the demise of Latin as a tool of communication at the national and international level  Latin – too difficult for non-Latinist scholars to have a command of  Strenghtening of nation states, and use of the national languages as a tool of their power politics

 Use of Latin as a language of science began to diminish even in 17th, above all in the 18th c.  France sought to replace Latin with her own national language  End of 18th c. national languages had ousted Latin  Smaller nations, whose languages were not instruments of power in the international arena, kept to the use of Latin

 Given the conservatism of legal circles, the transition from Latin to new national languages – particularly slow; especially – science and teaching of law  Theoretical legal works written in Latin until the 19th c.  Cc new legal works published in Latin in 16th c.

 Although Latin is no longer the language of legal science or of legal practice – leaving aside canon law – it has left important traces in modern legal languages  The style of modern legal languages still reflects the rhythm of old legal Latin  A large proportion of the vocabulary of modern legal languages comes from the legal Latin used in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, or the beginning of modern times

 Modern texts – direct Latin quotations: terms, expressions, maxims  Latin – a stylistic tool; an aesthetic medium; the need to impress the reader  By using Latin expressions and maxims, a lawyer sets out to show his professional competence  Latin expressions and maxims - “beloved folklore” of lawyers

 A high status value in the Western world  A symbol linking legal science and practical lawyering to the common European tradition  Latin maxims: on the walls of courthouses  Seals of judicial authorities – often adorned with such expressions;  also: emblems of public organs and law societies or bar associations

 Common heritage - facilitates communication between lawyers from various countries  Often: variants of Latin origin look alike, or expressions translated directly from Latin mean different things in different linguistic zones

 However: “each language…possesses its own Latin and its own way of using it”  The same expressions and maxims – not used in all countries, and their meaning is not necessarily the same  Today’s lawyers – lack an adequate knowledge of Latin

 In the future as today, only some lawyers have a good command of Latin  International legal Latin dictionary should be compiled, bringing together the expressions actually in use in different legal cultures, indicating their meaning in each of these cultures

 Leges barbarorum: lex Salica, lex Ribuaria  Primitive compilations: no general concepts (e.g.distinction between theft of a pig, a calf, a dog, etc;theft of a pig: 16 legal provisions)  Barbarian laws – drawn up in Latin  Latin loanwords: e.g. Pacht (‘lease’) < pactum

 Latin of medieval Germanic laws - a mixture of Germanic and Roman styles  In court hearings – German judges always used the vernacular (dialects of Old German)

 In 800 the Pope crowned Charlemagne Roman Emperor  When the empire was later divided, the tradition continued: Otto I got the centre of the Empire (today’s Germany and northern Italy) and was crowned Roman Emperor in 962: the (Germanic) Holy Roman Empire (Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation. Sacrum Romanum Imperium Nationis Germanicae)

 Over time, the Empire grew increasingly powerless in relation to the regional power centres  Power of the emperor diminished, that of regional princes flourished  Formally, the Empire lasted until 1806

 Old legal German, based on dialects – not uniform  Some terms – still used: anfechten (‘annul’), bescheinigen (‘to certify’), erweisen (‘to demonstrate’), verantworten (‘to be answerable for’, ‘guarantee’)  Level of abstraction – low: large number of words to describe concrete cases  Use of synonyms or quasi-synonyms

 The Holy Roman Empire - no uniform legal system created by the imperial legislator  Laws – local  Customary law – did not correspond to the needs of a German society characterised by rapid progress  Need for an advanced legal system

 European universities taught Roman law  Not classical Roman law but ius commune (Gemeines Recht), created by medieval lawyers  In harmony with Canon law, created on the basis of Roman law  Roman law – stressed the status of the Empire as a continuation of the original Roman Empire

 Judges of higher German courts – lawyers with a university education  In 1495 Imperial Court set up (Reichskammergericht)  Reichskamergericht applied Roman law (also partly Canon law)  Recognition by the imperial power of Roman law as the basis for German common law (Gemeines Recht)

 Beneath the Reichskammergericht stood the lower imperial courts, which also applied Roman law  As the application of Roman law spread in the German justice system, lay judges began asking legal scholars for opinions  Case files - sent to universities  German law faculties provided a kind of higher court service esp. in 16th and 17th centuries

 First professors of law – trained in Italy, in Roman law  Primitive commentaries on local German laws could not match refined legal doctrines of the Italian universities  Professors moved from country to country  Intellectualisation of German law; need for judges with a theoretical legal training

 Official languages for the Holy Roman Empire for the whole of its existence: German and Latin

 Medieval period: emperor should have a command of the language of the Church; heard proposals from his council in Latin, responding in the same language  After the Reformation, the protestant States used new German written standard (Hochdeutsch) since Low German was no longer accepted in the Diet

 Latin loanwords  Legal German – more abstract and precise  From the end of 15th c. German legal terminology was systematised and partly Latinised  During the reception period, Latin gave some 80% loanwords in German

 By mid-18th c. German-language legislation – still full of linguistically mixed texts, with many Latin quotations

 17th c. – French became a dominant power, spreading its language and culture to other countries, including the Holy Roman Empire  Spanish and Italian – also used in some situations  Influence of French on German – stronger in the late 17th and early 18th c. than that of English today

 Many French loanwords: in the mid-17th c. the number of French loanwords comparable to that of Latin loanwords  French – internal language of the Prussian Ministry of Foreign Affairs;  in some cases – treaties between two or more German-speaking states – concluded in French

 18th c.: ideal citizen – active, aware of his rights, rather than the passive subject of former times,  Rights of citizens to obtain information on legal rules  Requirement for clear legal language and drafting of intelligible codes

 Legal language should be concise, simple and understandable  It should be short, in the image of military orders  Legal texts should be clearly constructed, mysterious abbreviations and complex sentence structures abandoned, the use of Latin curtailed, words of foreign origin replaced by German words

 Herman Conring ( ): “If you use a foreign language or one known only to the learned, you are doing a (great) wrong to the people”  Internal decay of the Holy Roman Empire in 17th c. following the Thirty Years War  To regain national unity, the German language was needed as a cohesive factor

 Legal science: the choice of language of works presented at book fairs in Leipzig:  Books in Latin  1701:55%  1740 :27%  1770 :14%  Legal theses – published in Latin until the mid 19th c.

 End of 18th c.: German – the main language of German legal culture;  Latin – subsidiary means of clarifying new or difficult terms  Binary formulas - facilitated understanding of terminology: purely German words clarifying the meaning of foreign words: publice und öffentlich, bona fide und unter gutem Glauben

 More radical demands: Legal German had to be entirely cleansed of foreign words: methodical Germanisation (Eindeutschung) of the German language  No need for loanwords, since any subject could be dealt with by using purely German words

 Enlightenment: the world had to be conceptualised as a rational system, functioning with virtually mathematical accuracy  In law: the major systematic codifications were an expression of this notion

 Allgemeines Landesrecht für die preussischen Staaten (ALR, 1794), codification of Prussian substantive law covering constitutional and administrative rights as well as private law, Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (ABGB, 1811), a codification of Austrian civil law  Bavarian Kriminalgesetzbuch (1813)

 In 19th c. Germany was unified and rose to the position of a great power  National language – important reflection of nationalism  Cleansing the German language of foreign influences intensified with strengthened nationalism; many neologisms

 19th c. number of words of foreign origin fell from 4-5 to 0.5% (e.g. Alimentation. Unterhalt, Desertion – Verlassung, Citation – Ladung ‘ summons’, Kopie – Abschrift)

 Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (1900) almost completely Germanised terminology of German private law (Papierdeutsch)

 The most celebrated piece of German legislation  Excellent internal logic of the codes (on the model of natural sciences) but its content is not easily understood from the reader’s standpoint  A monument of refined legal scholarship; written for judges versed in law, not for laymen

 Conceptual hierarchisation, “pyramids of concepts”  Rechtsgeschäft ‘legal act’, ‘juristic act’, ‘act in law’, ‘legal transaction’, ‘transaction’, ‘juridical act’; Willenserklärung ‘declaration of intent’, ‘declaration of will’, ‘declaratory act’, ‘act of a party’; Schuldverhältnis ‘ legal relationship etween creditor and debtor’, ‘obligation’, ‘debt relationship’

 Many articles can only be understood when placed side by side with other articles located elsewhere in the code  Authors of the code sought to use each legal term in a single meaning

 Power of BGB lies in the formalisation of its rules, balance of structures and general principles of civil law  The code has remained in force despite great social and economic changes of 20th c.  In force in DDR before promulgation of the East German Civil Code in 1975  Reception in far-off countries such as Brazil and Japan

 In Switzerland – use of foreign words more common than in Germany; the number of these words – two times greater in the Swiss Civil Code (Zivilgesetzbuch, ZGB) than in the German Civil Code  Legal German – a certain number of words of foreign origin; apart from Latin, they often come from Renaissance Italian, esp. in commerce: Bank, Konto, Risiko, Giro,  French words – terminology of international law: Konvention, Intervention  Today: English (franchising, leasing)

 German used in several countries:  Federal Republic of Germany  Austria  Switzerland  Eastern Belgium  North of Italy (South Tyrol)

 South Tyrol – German terminology developed so that it is possible to use it to express every Italian institution; they sought to know if an Italian legal concept could be expressed by a term already adopted in Austria, Switzerland or Germany without the danger of misleading conclusions; where that was not possible – Italian loanword or a neologism created on the basis of German; as a result, a bilingual dictionary of legal and administrative language of South Tyrol published: terms in German and Italian, definitions in both languages

 Austria had its own legal and administrative system, whose terminology was created in 19th c. without the influence of the Eindeutschung movement  Terms that were unknown in Germany and the meanings of the same terms could be divergent  Ruling classes in Austria - in contact with non- German linguistic groups; a cultivated use of German developed, with no basis in German dialects: Schönbrunnerdeutsch or Hofratsdeutsch

 Legal German in Germany and Austria - identical: same traditions  Conceptual identity; legal terminology – similar  Differences: some 650 Austrian terms differ from corresponding terms in Germany (13%)  Defferences: designations of courts

 Austrian accession – minor changes in legal and administrative language  Law – harmonized by directives, with their character of framework laws  This allows preservation of traditional Austrian terminology because final rules are formulated in Austria  Regulations of direct application – use the terminology of the Federal Republic of Germany

 Historically – German was an important means of communication in the regions surrounding the Baltic Sea (notably in the Hanseatic era) and in Eastern Europe  Solid population base  In 1800, German was the largest language in Europe  Late 19th and early 20th c. official language in a substantial part of Europe  Large number of peoples of Central and Eastern Europe - In the immediate sphere of influence of German; also: Alsace and Lorraine belonged to the German Empire

 Defeat in World War II; cultural attraction of German diminished; eastern regions of the country annexed to Poland and the Soviet Union  International position of German – inferior to that of English and French  Today: 90 million German speakers in Europe; the corresponding figures worldwide: 120 million  Economic weight: German occupies 3rd place worldwide

 International spread of laws of German- speaking countries (Baltic countries, Nordic countries, Central Europe, Eastern Europe) - German political, economic and cultural influence  In Middle Ages, the Law of Magdeburg applied in Vilnius; Ukrainian documents from 16th to 18th c. refer to Sachsenspiegel code as a valid source of law; in partitioned Poland, the legislation of Prussia and Austria was applied

 19th c.: spectacular success of German science, which rose to a dominant world position in many disciplines  In 1920’s and 1930’s German was the main language of international congresses in physics and linguistics

 The position of German as an international scientific language weakened after World War II  German – not an international language outside Europe; official status only in 3 global organisations and in 12 European organisations

 EU: in 1994, only 6% of EU civil servants mainly used German in oral communication; the number of civil servants using German but with another mother tongue - still smaller

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 842 Oath of Strasbourg: Latin and Old French  Philip the Fair ( ) introduced French to the royal chancellery; the king’s example spread to the chancelleries of dukes and counts, city administrations and private documents  The king stressed the importance of dropping Latin from the administration of law and government

 In 13th c. French widely used in northern France  Mid-13th c. French was established language for legal documents, at least in the north  13th c.: over 2,000 documents drawn up in French  Judicial matters pleaded in French in the Middle Ages in northern France

 Expansion of French began after the Hundred Years War ( ), which had increased the power of the king of France  Linguistic unification – highly useful from the standpoint of the exercise of power

 Legal and administrative language of Paris began to challenge Latin earlier than any other language  Therefore, the government and the courts played a role of prime importance in the development of French; a large part of their vocabulary transmitted to ordinary language  French orthography also goes back to the practices of administrative and judicial organs

 Status of Latin weakened as a result of the Reformation  The Humanists set up the style of the Roman classics as the model – crippled the use of Latin for everyday purposes  16th and 17th c. French ousted Latin in government and courts

 At universities, the change was slower  In mid-17th c. French law faculties – still used Latin, traditional language of Roman law, ius commune and canon law  In 1679 Louis XIV had French law included in law faculty programmes; somewhat later, ordered that this law should be taught in French  Teaching of French law in French - only truly launched in 18th c.  Legal theses still written in Latin in 19th c.

 Decree of Villers-Cotterêt (1539): judgements and procedural acts were to be pronounced, recorded and delivered to the parties in “the French mother tongue and not in any other form”.  1629 French became the language of Church courts  Language of culture, literature, science

 Decree of Lyon (1510) still refers to langue de pays  Decree of Viller-Cotterêt (1539) speaks explicitly of French - end of the use of the Romance languages of the Midi  Judgements and other legal documents had to be drawn up in French, old languages of provinces excluded; protests in non-French speaking regions  At the time of the Revolution, 25 million inhabitants: 6 million did not understand French, 6 million understood it at the basic level, 10 million had a passable knowledge of French

 Revolutionary decrees obliged civil servants to use French and draw up all public documents in it  French – the language of the army  Compulsory military service, the press, postal services and railways increased the movement of the population and consolidated the central administration

 Latin terms transmitted from Antiquity by continuous tradition (loi<lex, juge <judex, justice < iustitia, délit < delictum, société<societas)  Medieval Latin: contumace < contumax ‘contempt’, ‘non-appearance in court’  Greek: démocratie, politique  Neologisms which were never used in Latin or Greek: autogestion, monoparental; today, legal neologisms of Graeco-Latin origin often come from English

 Italian loanwords: banqueroute, change  English loanwords: franchising, dumping, leasing

 Cartesian spirit: texts constructed in a logical and methodological way  Legal rules – systematically assembled in codes

 Legal texts – difficult to understand: long, complicated sentences, impersonal expressions, passive and negative forms (il n’est pas exclu que ‘ it is not impossible that’); limited use of adjectives, abundance of nouns; stereotyped phrases (e.g. dont acte ‘in witness/faith/verification’), archaisms, petrified expressions (ci-après ‘hereafter’, ledit, susdit ‘aforesaid’

 Repetitions less frequent than in legal English, but: e.g. nous avons arrêté et arrêtons ‘we have decided and do decide’  Petrified phrases: executory formulas for judicial decisions systematising the grounds of judgments: attendu que and considérant que  Form requirements in verbs: grounds should always be written in the indicative; using the conditional can lead to the judgment being quashed

 Association pour le bon usage du français dans l’administration, Commission de modernisation du langage judiciaire, Centre d’enregistrement et de révision des formulaires administratifs  Terms felt to be discriminatory – replaced  Courts should eliminate useless repetitions  Latin maxims should be reduced  Clarity of legal language  Today: struggle against Anglicisms

 University of Paris founded in 13th c.  Professors contributed greatly to the development of Canon law and ius commune  Added impetus to the theory of international private law, esp. in 16th c.  Many French legal works translated into Italian in 19th c.

 From the early 19th c. several foreign countries have received French codes, particularly the Civil Code (1804)  The Civil Code - a model for corresponding codes in various countries (Rhineland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland, Rumania; Quebec, Louisiana, Latin American countries; Egypt, Ethiopia, Maghreb)

 French administrative justice contributed to the birth of German administrative legal science in the late 19th c.

 Homogeneity of the legal languages of France and Belgium – French-speaking part of Belgium has tended until recently to look for inspiration almost exclusively to the legal culture of France, and not to the legal culture of Dutch-speaking Belgium, not to mention that of the Netherlands

 Legal French of Switzerland – partly original with respect to Legal French of France – legal traditions essentially Germanic  German – the language of preparation of laws  Zivilgesetzbuch (Civil Code) – translated into French  Fusion of Germanic and Romance legal cultures  French-speaking legal circles imitate the language of the dominant Germanic legal culture  Belief that concordance of content of the German and French variants of laws can only be guaranteed by literal translation of terms

 French law – model abroad  French legal influence – esp. strong in Italy  Italian law and legal science developed in the direction indicated by French models  New Italian legal terms often came from France  In Italian regions annexed to the French Empire (Piedmont, Parma, Piacenza, Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, Corsica) – decrees and administrative circulars published in both French and Italian

 Rumanian Civil Code – almost a direct copy of the French Civil Code  Not repealed even during the Communist period  Rumanian civil law terminology – based on French  The legal order systematised in the same way in all Romance countries; similarities in legal terms – not misleading

 Up to the 17th c. Latin was the main language of inter-state relations  Bilateral and multilateral treaties – drawn up in Latin  Following the rise of France to a dominant position, the use of French spread in the international arena as a language of diplomacy and international law

 The Holy Roman Empire insisted on the use of Latin, while French ambassadors presented documents in French  From 1676, all ambassadors of France spoke French in their countries of accreditation

 French spread to international treaties to which France was not a party  Dominance of French – so strong that it was used in cases where action was directed against France or even in cases involving her defeat: at the Congress of Vienna (1815) French remained the language of negotiations and Treaty language  1871, during peace negotiations following Franco-Prussian war, Otto von Bismarck used French

 End of 18th c: the US decided to use only English in their diplomatic relations;  20th c. English began to threaten the position of French in international relations, and acquired dominance in this field

 16th c. France became a colonial power: colonies in North America  French Canada ( )  British Canada ( )  “Canadian Canada” (1867)

 History of legal language – closely linked to legal translation  Before the British conquest - Canadian French – high quality  After the British conquest - poor translators corrupted the language

 End of 18th c. public law and the judicial system in Quebec were anglicised; this required rapid translation into French of a large number of laws and other legal English texts, to be applied to the French-speaking population  Laws were prepared exclusively in English until 1867  Translators – no specialised training  Fastidiousness and repetitiveness of legal English – repeated in legal French of Quebec (e.g. il sera levé, perçu et payé à sa Majesté ‘it shall be raised, levied and paid to His Majesty’ – repetition of synonyms)

 Between the early 1790’s and the mid-19th c. legal French in Canada moved very far from that in France  Legal English – expressed a completely different legal culture  French-Canadian legal texts – full of anglicisms (acte ‘loi’ (act), délai ‘retard’ (delay); évidence ‘preuve’ (evidence), offence ‘infraction’ (offence)

 Act of Union (1840) prescribed that English was the only official language in Canada  Strong resistance of French speakers  Recognition of French by public authorities  The Constitution of 1867 recognised the language rights of French speakers  1960’s Peaceful Revolution – the status of Quebec consolidated

 Importance of legal translation decreased thanks to autonomous preparation of laws in French  Today: French is the only official language in Quebec  Quebec National Assembly adopts all its laws in French

 Both English and French – official languages of Canada, but only at the level of the federal government and its institutions  Legal texts of the Canadian parliament – always translated into both languages  Drafts of Canadian federal laws – worked out simultaneously in English and French: co- drafting  The quality of the original draft – more easily revealed by comparing the two language versions than by examining a single version

 Terminological work and the principle of co- drafting have freed Canadian French from the patronage of English  Canadian legislative work brings fresh elements into the French language because the specific conditions imposed by legal texts oblige the Canadians to be creators, surrendering the mental comfort created by preserving what is old and certain

 Quebec: common law of English origin intermingles with law of French origin: mixed law  Public law comes from common law, private law is mainly continental  A French-style notarial profession – an important element of the Quebec legal system  Hierarchy of sources of law - continental

 Quebec legal French: the need to express traditional common law concepts in French and vice versa  In some cases – terms from French law obtained a meaning different from that in France: danger of mistakes and misunderstandings in communications with France

 At the time when English common law was created, legal circles were using French  Institutions peculiar to common law – expressed in French  By highlighting the original form of common law terms, it is possible to fashion terms that are authentically French, with a character at once old and new

 Terminological work enabled compilation of legal dictionaries containing, in French, the terminology of various branches of common law (e.g. law of property, trusts, torts)  “The mixed character of Quebec legal French is also in evidence in the fact that Latin maxims appearing in this form of French come both from the traditional Latin of common lawyers and from the Latin used as established in France.”

 19th c. French colonies in North Africa and Black Africa  The Maghreb (Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco) – multilingual regions  French – the sole official language of the region in 19th c.

 Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya  In today’s Maghreb, only Arabic is the official language; more people today with a command of French than at the end of the colonial era (French- language of higher education and upward social mobility)

 French – sole official language in Benin, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa), the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Chad, Togo  Traditional justice, based on customary law and administered by village elders – African languages  In Rwanda and Burundi- government and local courts use regional languages, while the central authorities and higher courts use French

 Djibuti: justice is administered in four languages; higher courts only operate in French, while the Islamic courts (sharia courts) always use Arabic  In courts applying traditional customary law, procedural languages: Arabic, Somali or Afar.  In all cases, judgments are drawn up in French so that they can be enforced

 Sub-Saharan Africa – customary laws  The French colonial power codified some of these  Customary laws – inadequate for modern society; completed by French law  France abolished customary rules if they were in contradiction with the fundamental European values, esp. in criminal law  French Criminal Code – applicable throughout French-ruled Africa

 French used in Black Africa - the same as that in France  North Africa – Islamic tradition; Arabic quotations in legal French of Maghreb, notably in traditional branches of law expressing concepts from the sharia  Local traditions and conditions also reflected in African legal French

 In a large part of the world French is still the official language (Canada, Northern, Western, Central Africa)  In Europe: Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg  Establishment of the European Communities – new importance of French: one of three procedural languages  Global organisations

 International community promoting the interests of French culture  Some countries where French is the official language – not members of Francophonia (Algeria, Switzerland)

 49% international organisations accord French the status of official language  International organisations for legislative harmonisation: e.g. the Hague Conference on Private International Law, charged with drafting conventjons in private international law and international procedural law; until 1960, draft conventions only drawn up in French; today, French and English are used

 Unidroit (Institute international pour l’unification du drolit privé) – originally attached to the League of Nations, today and international organisation aiming to unify national legislation on private law; previously operated only in French; currently, several languages possess the official status; English and French used as working languages; Revue de droit uniforme/Uniform Law Review - bilingual

 French – important in preparation of EU legal rules  Working language of ECJ: decisions drawn up in French, although only the version in the procedural language is authentic  French language division has to translate into French all documents lodged by parties in a language other than French  Periodicals on European law  Legal culture and techniques - received from the outset from France: it is always simple to describe a legal system by using the language by which the system was originally created

 OLD ENGLISH (c c. 1100)  MIDDLE ENGLISH (c c.1450)  MODERN ENGLISH (c )

 OLD NORSE  Lexical words  Nouns: birth, bull, dirt, egg, fellow, husband, leg, sister, skin, sky, skirt, window  Adjectives: ill, low, odd, rotten, sly, weak  Verbs: call, crawl, die, get, give, lift, raise, scream, take,  Function words  Pronouns: they (their, them)  Conjunctions: though  Determiners: some, any  Auxiliaries: are  Names  Family names: -son: Johnson, Stevenson  Place names: -by 'farm, town': Derby, Rugby, Whitby; -thorp 'village': Althorp, Linthorp

 Administration  Authority, bailiff, baron, chamberlain, chancellor, constable, council, court, crown, duke, empire, exchequer, government, liberty, majesty, mayor, messenger, minister, noble, palace, parliament, prince, realm, reign, revenue, royal, servant, sir, sovereign, statute, tax, traitor, treason, treasurer, treaty  Law  Accuse, advocate, arrest, arson, assault, assize, attorney, bail, bar, blame, convict, crime, decree, depose, estate, evidence, executor, felon, fine, fraud, heir, indictment, inquest, jail, judge, jury, justice, larceny, legacy, libel, pardon, perjury, plaintiff, plea, prison, punishment, sue, summons, trespass, verdict, warrant  Military  Ambush, archer, army, battle, besiege, captain, combat, defend, enemy, garrison, guard, lance, lieutenant, navy, retreat, sergeant, siege, soldier, vanquish

 “All lawsuits shall be conducted in English, because French is much unknown in the said realm”

 “The English tongue is of small account, stretching no further than this island of ours, nay not there over all.”

 After the Norman conquest (1066)  To consolidate his dominance, the king sought to centralise the justice system by establishing the Royal Courts of Justice at Westminster  Powerful vassals resisted the centralisation of justice  Royal Courts – able to adjudicate cases falling clearly within the king’s competence  Progressively, increasing categories of cases transferred to these Courts

 Court judgments - importance that went beyond the particular cases in which they had been pronounced  To specify the conditions and limits of the binding effect of judgments, a refined rule of precedent was progressively created  The legal system built by case law strengthened the position of judges

 During the Middle Ages, Royal Courts – archaic and formalistic judicial organs  The Chancellor began to recify judgments of the Courts of Westmionster on the basis of natural justice  Court of Chancery – created its own remedies and legal concepts of highly technical nature, maintaining only a distant link with fairness and reasonableness

 17th c. fierce struggles for power between the Courts of Westminster and the Court of Chancery  Ended in a compromise guaranteeing both courts their proper field of competence  Division betweeen equity and common law was formed; maintained even after unification of the English justice system in the 19th c.

 The amount of English legislation – comparable to that of continental countries  Statutes- considered to be incomplete until the moment when they are “covered” by numerous precedents specifying the interpretation of their main provisions

 Divisions of law and legal concepts- different from civil law  Common law – equity division – unknown in continental countries  Many institutions, e.g. trust, foreign to civil- law Europe

 Consists of an exceptionally large amount of detail  Explanation: originally developed by judges  Unlike the legislator, the courts have to draw very fine distinctions since they have to decide highly varied individual cases

 Rules of law induced from cases – remarkably concrete  These rules – cannot be raised to a level of abstraction as rules formulated by legal science  Since case law is composed of a network of rules, laws have to be written in the same way, i.e. highly detailed to ensure compatibility of the two types of rules

 Verbal magic  Acts of transfer required complicated and precise language rituals; a single mistake could nullify the act  Use of rhythmic expressions  Alliteration – common in maxims and binary expressions

 Some Latin words  Royal legislation and spread of Christianity  Examples: convict, admit, mediate, legitimate

 The Norman Conquest brought to England a French-speaking upper class  Latin – dominant in law  Normans – used Latin in important contexts  c. Latin was the language of legal documents in England

 In this period – common law was created  Many essential common law terms were originally formulated in Latin (e.g. breve ‘writ’)  Meaning diverged from that of classical Latin  Often, Norman French or even English words were Latinised (e.g. morder > murdrum) ‘dog Latin’

 1st law promulgated in French in 1275  End of 13th c. both Latin and French used as legislative languages  Early 14th c. French used in drafting laws (except in Church matters)  Late 13th c. the Royal Courts used French during sessions; case reports – prepared in French

 French became the legal language in England from the late 13th c., both for legislation and the law courts  The use of French in English legal circles – a strange phenomenon because in 13th c. French had already begun to disappear in England as a language of communication; yet the rise of French as language of the law only started at that time

 Reasons:  A section of the English aristocracy – still French-speaking at the end of 13th c.  French as the language of culture  Centralisation of justice system consolidated the status of French  Secularisation of the justice system – clerics no longer operated as judges

 With its general disappearance from England, French had become the mark of the true elites  Legal profession – monopoly of the elites  French – guarantee that the people could not meddle in the justice system because they were unable to follow the trial  Law French – even then a dead language: its expressions had a clear legal meaning; appropriate for use as legal terms

 1362 Statute of Pleading – drafted in French! – prescribed that judges were to use English but that court minutes could still be prepared in Latin  According to Sir Edward Coke, it was better that the unlearned were not able to read legal materials because they would get it all wrong and harm themselves!

 End of 14th c. parliamentarians were using spoken English  Still in 17th c. possible to hear law French in the Inns of Court, and, occasionally, in the courts; a number of legal works – still written in law French  French and Latin finally abolished in 1731

 Latin – declined in 16th and 17th c.; remained an important legal language: court records, writs and other legal documents written in Latin until 18th c.

  Latin supremacy  Law French supremacy  English supremacy

 English – a global language  Varies according to different situations; sometimes: stiff and conservative, sometimes innovative and creative  Difference between the spoken language of court sessions and written legal language

 Legal English – a language of interaction between Old English (Anglo-Saxon, with Scandinavian elements), Medieval Latin, Old French  Latin and French expressions - part of the most basic vocabulary of English law; foundations of English legal thinking  Calques – translations from Latin and French (originally, common law was comune ley)

 shortened expressions  Nisi prius (‘unless before’) = a matter of proceedings at first instance with a jury present  Affidavit (‘he affirmed’) = ‘a written or printed declaration confirmed by an oath’  Habeas corpus (‘you may have the body’) = a judge’s order to bring a prisoner before the court to clarify the legality of detaining him

 Influence on word formation:  Old French past participle: -e or –ee (for the person obtaining sth or forming the object of an action  Doer of the action: -or/-er  Employer/employee, trustor/trustee, vendor/vendee

 Word order  Accounts payable, attorney general, court martial, fee simple, letters patent

 Binary expressions: words with the same meaning existed at the same time in the form of Latin-French variants and Anglo-Saxon variants.  Repetitions ensured that legal messages were understandable in a multilingual society  Acknowledge and confess, act and deed, devise and bequeath, fit and proper, goods and chattels, will and testament

 triple repetition: null and void and of no effect, authorized, empowered and entitled to  To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth

 Case law – fundamental  If the parties omit sth from the contract, they cannot rely on the courts to insert it later on their behalf by way of interpretation  Terms of a contract – always interpreted narrowly: parol evidence rule: if the meaning of a written contract is clear, then no other evidence is allowed as to its content; the contract should contain all that is needed

 The language of a contract governed by common law should be general enough to cover every situation, yet precise enough to ensure that the legal position of the parties is unambiguous  The contract should show with certainty what it includes and what it does not (Ibid: 237)

 Some 1,200-1,500 million people in command of English; 670 million native speakers  English – official language in 75 states or administrative territories  85% international organisations use English as one of their languages  Dominance in international trade

 The influence of English law – terminated with the independence  Nevertheless, the approach to the legal order, fundamental principles and concepts of law, essential legal terminology - the same in England and the US

 Fundamental ideas in line with the English tradition  1) supremacy of the law (rule of law)  2) rule of precedent  3) adversarial procedure

 Separation between private and public law less important than in civil law countries  Separation of powers  federalism

 Corporation – company  Visiting rights – right of access

 Traditional expressions: hereafter, herein, hereof, herewith  complexity

 Common law took root alongside the traditional systems of law: Hindu law and Muslim law – application limited to traditional branches of law (family law, inheritance)  19th c. a large number of laws came into force; prepared by the British, often in London  The highest judicial organ: the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (London)

 English – language of higher education and colonial administration  1837 English became the official language in India  From 1844 only those educated in English could be appointed civil servants

 Republic of India – English remains the language of higher education and science; Hindi – National Official Language  English – language of government and the higher justice system

 Pakistan – Urdu  Bangladesh – Bangla (formerly: Bengali)  Legal terminology and style in India and Pakistan – essentially British  English sometimes operates as a linguistic tool even of Islamic law; differences: terms expressing original concepts of Islamic law  “In Pakistan, the language of Islamic law is in fact legislative English” (N. Ahmad)

 Lawyers in non-English speaking countries daily drawing up contracts in English; often contain language similar to traditional common law contracts – serious problems  Cultural collision  Civil law lawyers may copy common law contracts without fully understanding them

 Where litigation has to be heard by a State’s court, the interpretation may cause considerable surprise to one of the parties  A British or North American court tends to interpret the terms of a contract drawn up in English in line with traditional common law thinking  The terms may acquire a meaning completely different from that imagined by the party from a continental country  Efforts to develop terminology that is not too closely linked to the legal orders of particular States