Towards a European Legal Culture

Legal Issues Journal 5, 2, p. 181-185, 2017

Collected Courses of the Academy of European Law / Recueil des cours de l’Académie de droit européen, 1993

This article introduces the special issue of JLL on EU legal culture and translation. The introduction gives an overview of the papers comprised in the special issue and provides the theoretical background to set the scene for the discussion in the papers. The special issue is a follow-up on the panel organised at the Language and Law in a World of Media, Globalisation and Social Conflicts conference at the University of Freiburg. We argue that the EU legal culture is a perfect case in point for the study of the intersection between law and language. Due to the extreme degree of mediation and filtering of law through the EU's official languages, the EU legal culture emerges through translation as a hybrid supranational pan-European construct with mutual dependencies on national legal cultures. The contributions to the special issues address various aspects of the law and language intersection in the EU context: the role of English as the EU's lingua franca, the impact of national legal cultures on legal translation, strategic ambiguity and its interpretation by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the impact of EU integration on legal languages, and finally, framing and ideology in EU legal translation. Overall, by approaching the EU legal culture from various perspectives, this special issue refines our understanding of how the EU legal culture is affected by multilingual translation.

Teka Komisji Prawniczej PAN Oddział w Lublinie, 2023

The aim of the article was to assess the legal culture in the European Union during the crises plaguing Europe in the 21st century. It focuses on a case study of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Although legal culture develops over a long period of time, it seems that in recent years the process of its change has accelerated, which is very clearly visible on the example of EU constitutionalism. The assessment of legal culture during the pandemic crisis was thus analyzed in relation to EU constitutionalism. The most important research questions included: (i) Have the most important constitutional values of the EU been transformed due to the crisis? (ii) Have the procedures for changing constitutional law been maintained?, (iii) Has appropriate democratic control and accountability been maintained throughout the process of these changes?, and finally (iv) What was the role of politics in the processes of EU constitutionalism?

Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice

This article deals with some questions of legal language in the Nordic countries. It stresses the fact that, while there is no common legal language among these countries, there is still a strong common understanding even though each language (i.e., Danish, Norwegian and Swedish; Finnish is a different language) has also developed its own terminology. Nordic legal language has its roots in the first written form of the law in the years before and after 1200. Later, legal language was influenced by the German language, and, to some degree, more recently by English. The language of Nordic courts was always the vernacular. At the university, Latin was used until the eighteenth century (in dissertations still in the first part of the nineteenth century), but today studies of law are carried out in Nordic languages. There remains a great need for scholarly works on Nordic law in Nordic languages at a time when the balance between international orientation and the necessity of producing s...

European Law Journal, 1999

ejls.eu

Hungarian Journal of Legal Studies, 2018

Programme aim and philosophy The Network of Transnational Doctoral Research is dedicated to the provision of adequate structures and platforms for the mentoring and exchange of views among early-career scholars. It aims to enhance the knowledge and exposure to the academic world of young researchers, with emphasis on the encouragement of innovative and independent research. The 2015 programme will focus on the complex and challenging topics included in the broader research area of Culture and the Law, in continuation of its 2014 event. While the primary aim is to encourage legal scholars to participate, train and exchange views, the conveners consistently support and promote interdisciplinary research that is deemed desirable to grasp the complexities of the studied areas. The Network has two objectives: 1. It aims to build a global research community of peers which is based on scientific excellence and a broad outlook on the current challenges of academic research in a globalized world 2. It will strive to mobilize scholars to be part of the current and future developments in the area of Transnational Law broadly understood. The objectives of the Network will be achieved by a programme of activities organized jointly with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the Seconda Università degli Studi in Napoli, the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law and the Department of Comparative Law at the School of Law in Lucerne. Programme Themes Proposals for papers are invited from postgraduate researchers in order to foster links in research between students. Potential topics may include but are not limited to: • Globalisation, Culture & Law • Minorities and Diversities in Culture • Parallel Legal Systems and Ethnocultural Justice • Reconstructing Multiculturalism in Policy and Planning • Intercultural and Intracultural Diversification in law • Comparative and/or empirical practices of multiculturalism in legal systems • New directions in the construction of the role of law/culture in culture/law Selected papers may be invited to contribute towards the development of a themed edited volume.

2004

European Law Journal, 2010

2004

In this paper I would like to elaborate on the interaction between law and language. The use of the different (legal) languages of the European Union Member States is one of the most practical and most difficult problems in the process of European integration. The linguistic matters are directly contacting all legal issues. In February 2003 the Commission launched an Action Plan on a more coherent European Contract Law. With this Action Plan a sector specific approach of legal and linguistic harmonization will start. On of the official aims will be the preparation of a common frame of reference, providing a pan-European terminology and rules. This contribution will reflect the need of a better and more coherent legal language use on a European Union level and describe a more concept-based approach of linguistic legal integration. Kurzfassung Recht und Sprache sind eng miteinander verbunden. Innerhalb der Europäischen Union bilden die unterschiedlichen Sprachen ein schwieriges Problem auf dem Weg der europäischen Integration. Im Februar 2003 veröffentlichte die Kommission ihren Aktionsplan für ein kohärenteres Vertragsrecht. Mit diesem Aktionsplan wurde ein weiterer rechtlicher und sprachlicher Harmonisierungsprozess eingeleitet. Unter anderem fordert der Aktionsplan einen gemeinsamen Referenzrahmen. Dieser Referenzrahmen soll auch eine gemeineuropäische Terminologie und gesamteuropäische Regeln bereithalten. In diesem Beitrag soll der Gebrauch einer kohärenteren und klaren europäischen Rechtssprache reflektiert werden.

Wroclaw Review of Law, Administration and Economics, 2018

The present paper hopes to contribute to promoting a counter-hegemonic discourse of Central (and Eastern) European legal identity, underscoring our legal-cultural bonds based on a common past, a common juridico-political mentality and a common present predicament. To this end, we hope to reinvigorate the discussion regarding Central Europe (or Central and Eastern Europe) as being a legal family in its own right, distinct both from Western European legal families (Romanic, Germanic, Common Law and Scandinavian) on the one hand, and the Eurasian legal family (post-Soviet), on the other. Believing that legal taxonomy can be seen as a matter of social construction of reality, and in any event it having a disciplining function, we hope to influence the discourses of comparative law with view to reframing the epistemic structures concerning our region. In turn, this can impact both the way we – Central and Eastern European jurists – perceive ourselves, and the way in which we are perceived. Considering the ‘death and burial’ of the Socialist Legal Family as the founding myth of our regional juridical identity, we posit the succession of the former by two coexisting legal families: the Central European and the Eastern European/Eurasian ones. However, the paper does not intend to provide definitive answers to the questions of legal taxonomy of the postSoviet/post-socialist juridical space; its ambition is more moderate – to put forward a number of arguments in favour of a Central European Legal Family with the intent of destabilising the hegemonic ‘return to Europe’ approach and fostering a discussion of comparatists, legal theorists and socio-legal scientists focused on the problem of legal identity/identities of our region. The main claim of the paper has a metatheoretical and critical character, and it boils down to the statement that the concept of Central (and Eastern) Europe in legal culture, and more specifically the concept of a Central European Legal Family, ought to be introduced owing to its emancipatory potential for the legal field in our countries. This is because, currently, the legal field in Central Europe suffers from symbolic violence which places it in a peripheral position, or even denies its existence.