scholarly journals Die Wenslikheid van Afrikaans as Vaktaal vir Regstudent

Author(s):  
Ellen Lombard ◽  
Terrence R Carney

Since 1994 the official language status in South Africa went from two state languages to eleven. This caused English to stand out as the lingua franca of the wider community and resulted in government using English as the preferred medium of communication. This is especially the case in the business of law. The legal practice from the private, public and academic sectors is anglicising at a rapid rate which means that Afrikaans is diminishing as a legal language and that the nine additional official languages are not being developed entirely to function at a higher level. In the light of Anglicisation it begs the question whether it is still useful to teach Afrikaans as a legal language at tertiary institutions. This article explores the matter by focusing on the following: the importance of language within the legal profession, the history of Regsafrikaans, Anglicisation within the legal profession, English as the only language of record and the expediency of Afrikaans as a legal language. The authors arrive at the conclusion that it is indeed still important to teach Regsafrikaans to law students and recommend that law faculties should keep or reinstate this subject as part of their LLB curriculum.

1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 1059-1069
Author(s):  
Reader – Charles Sparrow

ABSTRACTAs part of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the actuarial profession, the link between Gray's Inn and Staple Inn is being renewed with the appointment by Gray's Inn of a Reader, who will give an annual lecture at Staple Inn as a contribution to legal and actuarial education.The first reading for some 300 years gives an outline of the history of Staple Inn, from its origin in the fourteenth century as a ‘Staple’, a customs house for wool, later becoming an Inn of Chancery of one of the four Inns of Court, Gray's Inn. It was in the Inns of Chancery that training was given to law students. The progression of English law and of the training of law students are outlined, particularly how they affected Staple Inn and its subordinate relationship to Gray's Inn. The eventual loosening of the ties between the Inns of Court and the Inns of Chancery, the end of the involvement of Staple Inn with the legal profession, and the coming of the Institute of Actuaries to Staple Inn are all described.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Mariana Relinque

Resumen: El lenguaje jurídico tradicional se ha caracterizado por ser un lenguaje hermético, rebuscado y difícil de comprender. Sin embargo, debería poder expresarse con claridad, pues no tiene como destinatarios únicos a los juristas, sino también a los ciudadanos. De esta forma, han surgido movimientos en prácticamente todos los países occidentales para conseguir la simplificación del lenguaje jurídico. Los países de habla inglesa son los que más han avanzado en este campo, especialmente los Estados Unidos. En la Unión Europea se redactan los documentos de acuerdo con las normas del lenguaje jurídico simplificado. En España se ha avanzado muy poco en este tema, ya que a pesar de que se han puesto en marcha varias iniciativas desde el Gobierno, ninguna se ha visto reflejada en la práctica.Abstract: Traditional legal language has been described as cluttered, wordy and difficult to understand. However, legal language should be clear and correct, since it is not only the language of the legal profession, but it is also used to communicate with citizens. Thus, movements campaigning against legalese started to appear in almost all the Western countries. At present, Plain English movements have been the most successful ones, especially in theUnited States. In the European Union, documents are written following the rules of plain language. InSpain, despite different governmental initiatives, plain Spanish is not used in legal practice. 


2021 ◽  
pp. 0067205X2110165
Author(s):  
Sara Dehm

Legal histories of Australia have largely overlooked the exclusion of European émigré lawyers from legal practice in Australia. This article recovers part of this forgotten history by tracing the drawn-out legal admission bids of two Jewish émigré lawyers in the mid-20th century: German-born Rudolf Kahn and Austrian-born Edward Korten. In examining their legal lives and doctrinal legacies, this article demonstrates the changing role and requirement of British subjecthood in the historical constitution and slow cultural transformation of the Australian legal profession. This article suggests that contemporary efforts to promoting cultural diversity in the Australian legal profession are enriched by paying attention to this long and difficult history of legal exclusions.


Author(s):  
Lyudmila Popova ◽  

The article considers the nominative field of the concept "court" in the history of the Russian official language on the material of legislative documents of the 18 th century. The subject of the study is the relationship between the official segment of the concept "court" and the ordinary segment in the context of ethnic mentality. The hypothesis of ethno-cultural neutrality of the official segment has been tested. Special attention is paid to the evaluation nominations of the concept, their syncretsemia is revealed. The activity of non-terminological, morally and religiously marked nominations in relation to terms is found. Functional-semantic insufficiency of legal categories, their stable connection with moral and ethical categories in legal language consciousness is shown. Domination of semantic and conceptual constituents "truthful", "righteous / decent", "fair" over "legal" is established. The functional weakness of the conceptual sphere "law" is noted. The traditional ethno-specific perception of legal language consciousness is stated as predominance of moral and ethical concepts "truth", "righteousness", "fairness", "good", "conscience", "soul" over the "law". A high degree of ethno-cultural marking of the official segment of the concept "court" with a dominant meliorative valuation was noted. The analysis of the ordinary segment of the concept "court" in Russian paremiology revealed the above mentioned ethno-cultural concepts with a prevailing pejorative estimate. The coincidence of the justice pattern in the official and ordinary legal consciousness is noted.


1995 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 924
Author(s):  
Richard F. Devlin

In this article the author offers some reflections on professional responsibility. He straddles the optimist and pessimist perspectives espousing "pessoptimism" as a more adequate position than either extreme. The author begins by deconstructing the title of the conference in which the paper was delivered: "A New Look: A National Conference on the Legal Profession and Ethics," which took place in Calgary, in June 1994. Pursuing a middle path between the optimistic and pessimistic approaches to professional responsibility, the author outlines the parameters of his ethical vision which provides some directions for legal practice. There are three elements to his restructured ethical vision: the "talent" of critical self-reflexivity, the maxim to act responsibly and the injunction to do no harm. The author draws two conclusions from his study: first, it is possible to talk about legal ethics and to outline some procedural and substantive ethical guidelines. Second, ethics are plural and diversified, contingent upon the nature of the "law job" involved. Finally, the author attempts to locate the "ethical triad" in the context of several different aspects of the legal profession; in legal education, as law students, lawyers, judges, benchers and legislators. He suggests that the primary responsibility for improved legal service lies with those who are within the system and that legal ethics ought to be seen as enforceable "public" norms. In conclusion, returning to the notion of "pessoptimism," the author advocates an optimistic approach but sets out reservations and cautions. In the end, the author hopes that if the legal community cannot agree to do more good, perhaps it can at least agree to do less harm.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-402
Author(s):  
J. A. Burt

Two decades into the 21st Century, it is abundantly clear that Artificial Intelligence technology will fundamentally change the legal system as well as the economics of our daily lives. During the early years of AI development, computers successfully surpassed humans only in complex games requiring exceptional intelligence (e.g., chess, Go, Shogi). The legal profession assumed that AI would be unable to master the nuances and ambiguities of language and the skills required of first class lawyers. The recent history of AI advancement proved that assumption wrong. When combined with the new focus of neuroscientists and related disciplines on the study of the human brain, AI stands on the threshold of exceeding human intelligence in the areas which have historically been the exclusive domain of the legal profession. There is currently a broad array of important tools in the AI field which lawyers may use to improve efficiency and profitability, These AI tools are just the beginning. We can also anticipate that AI will necessarily and substantially affect decisions traditionally relegated to the autonomy of individual citizenry as well, with dramatic consequences. This paper attempts to identify the implications of AI technology on the legal profession, the broader society in which it operates, and the challenges confronted by the next generation of lawyers and law students.


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Graham

This essay explores the ways in which Ireland's sacralised national language figures in Beckett's work. Oblique references to Irish in the Beckett oeuvre are read against a history of Anglo-Irish investment in the language as a mode of ‘impatriation’, a means by which to circumscribe anxieties surrounding an identity fraught with socio-political anomalies. In addition, the suspicion of ‘official language’ in Beckett's work is considered in light of his awareness of the ‘language issue’ in his native country, particularly in relation to the powerful role of the Irish language in the reterritorialisation of the civic sphere in post-independence Ireland.


Pólemos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Nicolini

Abstract This essay addresses different patterns of the visualisation of the law. It examines how scholars attempt to depict, represent, and perform the law and its founding authority. It also focuses on the pragmatics of legal language: written and spoken standard legal English are pragmatically enriched within contexts where the law is interpreted, uttered, or performed. The linguistic notion of “context” discloses the interrelations between the agendas of law and power and reveals how the law conveys its content to the body politic as its ultimate addressee. It then proposes a renewed concept of legal linguistics. In order to determine the different ideologies underpinning the evolution of English legal language, as well as its prototypical forms of the visualisation of the law, three stages in the history of the English language will be examined: Late Middle English, Early Modern English, and Contemporary English. Each of these stages will be likened to the different parts of judicial proceedings. This will allow us to examine how English legal language has been used in a specific context, the trial, where the law is both uttered and performed.


1896 ◽  
Vol 42 (176) ◽  
pp. 85-102
Author(s):  
A. Wood Renton ◽  
D. Yellowlees

Mr. Wood Renton.Viewed from the Legal Standpoint.Within the last two years no less than three Parliamentary Reports, dealing with the problems presented by the familiar phenomena of inebriety and recidivism, have been published,∗ and a measure † designed, and, to a large extent, calculated to carry the main recommendations embodied in these documents into effect, has been read a second time in the House of Lords, under the pilotage of the then head of English legal administration. These facts show that public opinion has at length been thoroughly aroused as to the necessity for fresh legislation on the subject of habitual drunkenness and crime, and render any preliminary historical sketch of the growth of the movement, which is apparently at last on the eve of attaining its objects, superfluous. If there is any member of the medical or legal profession who is still in ignorance of the process by which the problems in question have been brought to the stage of perfect ripeness for legislative solution, he may be referred with confidence to an admirable summary of the Parliamentary history of legislation affecting inebriates by Mr. Legge, the Secretary to the Inebriates Committee, 1891, which forms the 6th appendix to the minutes of evidence taken by that body, and is reproduced, with some additions and alterations, as Appendix M in the evidence taken by the Scottish Committee of 1894, and to the three Parliamentary Reports which have suggested the present review (see note, sup.).


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Weinberg

<p>Over the last 30 years alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has become more prominent in Australian legal practice due to the need to reduce the cost of access to justice and to provide more expedient and informal alternatives to litigation. As legal educators, we need to ask: how should we be preparing law students entering practice for these changes? How can we ensure that once they become lawyers, our students will not rely entirely on litigious methods to assist their clients but instead look at alternatives for dispute resolution?</p><p>In this paper, I argue that there is no alternative to teaching ADR in clinic in order to address client needs and to ensure that students engaged in clinical education are prepared for changes in legal practice today. I show that the increasing focus upon ADR in Australian legal practice represents a challenge for law schools, and that legal educators need to ensure they are educating students about ADR.</p><p>I argue that it is important to determine whether ADR is being taught to students undertaking clinical legal education in ways that will enhance their preparation for legal practice. I will show that there is a need to explore: whether ADR is being taught within clinical legal education, the strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches, and how the teaching of ADR within clinics can be improved.</p>


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