scholarly journals Interjections in American and Danish courtroom interaction: A linguistic and legal cultural comparison

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-173
Author(s):  
Sune Sønderberg Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Cultural Comparison ◽  
Direct Examination ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Interactional Functions ◽  
Courtroom Interaction ◽  
Qualitative Analyses

This study compares the use of interjections by the defence lawyers in an American and a Danish criminal trial during their direct-examination of their clients, i.e. the defendants. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses it is shown that the Danish lawyer uses interjections much more frequently than the American lawyer, and that the interjections used by the American lawyer tend to have different interactional functions than those used by the Danish lawyer. Thus, while the American lawyer practices a composed and transactional style of interaction, the Danish lawyer adopts a fairly loose and casual style. The interactional styles of the two lawyers, as seen through their use of interjections, are discussed and explained as reflections of central cultural traits of the two countries’ legal traditions, drawing, amongst others, on the basic divide between common law adversarialism and civil law inquisitorialism.

Towards a Transsystemic Study of the Ghana Legal System

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Poku Adusei
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
The Law ◽  
Cultural Dialogue

This article provides comprehensive insights into the study of the Ghana legal system as an academic discipline in the law faculties in Ghana. It urges the view that the study of the Ghana legal system, as an academic discipline, should be transsystemic. Transsystemic pedagogy consists in the introduction of ideas, structures and principles which may be drawn from different legal traditions such as civil law, common law, religion-based law, African law and socialist law traditions to influence the study of law. Transsystemia involves teaching law ‘across,’ ‘through,’ and ‘beyond’ disciplinary fixations associated with a particular legal system. It is a mode of scholarship that defies biased allegiance to one legal tradition in order to foster cross-cultural dialogue among legal traditions. It involves a study of law that re-directs focus from one concerned with ‘pure’ legal system to a discourse that is grounded on multiple legal traditions.

Legal Traditions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Intercultural Professional Communication

2011 ◽  
pp. 216-246
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
International Law ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
Professional Communication ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Global Communications

This chapter examines the relations between rhetoric and law across cultures, grounding the discussion in U.S. common law, Latin American Civil law, and Asian law. It also explores the writing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a model of developing “international” or “universal” approaches to law and human rights. It concludes by discussing recent events of international law involving intellectual property and global communications.

scholarly journals The Roots of Canadian Law in Canada

2010 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Ralston Saul
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Local Experience ◽  
Canadian Law ◽  
Historical Viewpoint ◽  
Aboriginal Law

Abstract This article asks the Canadian legal community to look beyond the standard historical viewpoint that roots Canadian law in the British common law and French civil law traditions. The author discusses the historical foundations of Canadian law in a uniquely Canadian context, beginning with the earliest interactions between the First Nations and the Europeans. Drawing on the research outlined in his recent book, A Fair Country, the author challenges his audience to think of Canadian law as far more than the local implementation of foreign legal traditions. While Canada has freely borrowed from various legal traditions, the application of law in Canada has been a unique process intimately tied to Canadian history. The author calls on us to recognize a distinctly Canadian legal tradition which has grown out of Aboriginal law and subsequent local experience while being influenced by, but by no means limited to, common law and civil law traditions.

Brexit. Or, Is the European Union Educable?

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (S1) ◽  
pp. 63-70
Author(s):  
Russell A. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
The Face ◽  
European Civil Code

In an essay from 1998 the comparative law scholar Pierre Legrand asked the question “are civilians educable?” It was a theme that had preoccupied him for some years as he agonized over what he regarded as the intolerant, totalizing, and normalizing manner in which civilian legal systems and their acolytes encounter other legal traditions. He had documented, for example, the ways in which Quebec's new 1994 Civil Code constructively sought to suppress and exclude the significant and historically relevant Anglophone community in Quebec. Legrand argued that this domineering posture is a product of the civil law's cosmological and autarkic mentality. “The difficulty,” Legrand lamented, “is that the civil law mind … is reflexively imperialistic … because of its penchant for universalization.” Far more than his disquiet over the precarious future of Quebec's Anglophone community, Legrand came to be concerned about the fate of the English common law tradition in the face of the European Union's convergence agenda. This was, to Legrand's mind, an apocalyptic confrontation between England's still-proud legal culture and Europe's horsemen of convergence: the ECJ, the Commission, the Parliament. With increasing distress Legrand turned his attention to the way in which the European Community (and later the Union) “is liable to achieve … the marginalization of one of the subcultures that have defined western Europe historically.” He would go on to insist that “European legal systems are not converging” and to raise ever-more strident objections to the idea of a European civil code. This would not cease until Legrand had written “Antivonbar,” an incendiary manifesto aimed at salvaging the English common law from what he viewed as the Union's closed-fisted and violent politics of supremacy, which had taken the form of the proposed European Civil Code.

scholarly journals Analysing Arbitration Laws across Legal Systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (32) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Vijay K. Bhatia ◽  
Christopher N. Candlin
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Information Load ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Commercial Arbitration ◽  
Socialist Market Economy ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Model Law ◽  
Socialist Market

In this paper, the national Indian and Chinese statutes on arbitration are compared with the UNCITRAL Model Law. After a presentation of the GILD-MMC project, focus is especially on textual aspects indicating attitudes towards the relation between the administrative powers and the parties in commercial arbitration. Thus, looking at the features all-inclusiveness, information load, information spread, legislative style and transparency signifi cant differences are found and related to the different com municative purposes (overall model vs. specifi c national rules), the different legal traditions (common law vs. civil law) and the different political systems (westernised market economy vs. socialist market economy).

The Keenest Condiments: the Spectrum of Experts Across Traditions in Construction Arbitration

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 103-123
Author(s):  
Giovanna Novis Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
Expert Report ◽  
International Construction ◽  
Legal Traditions

This paper will explore the role of expert witnesses in international construction arbitration across legal traditions. The focus will be to highlight the differences between the two types of experts. For the purposes of this paper, we will draw a spectrum with two extreme examples of expert witnesses. On one extreme of the spectrum, there is the expert who makes a living out of expert work and thus is seen to be closer to the client. On the other extreme of the spectrum, there is the expert who is providing an opinion on something that is his or her life’s work, this expert might never have given an expert report before. Both ends of the spectrum are heavily criticized. The goal is to distinguish both sides of the spectrum, considering the aspects of Civil Law and Common Law traditions.

FIDUCIARY OWNERSHIP AND TRUSTS IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

2014 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 901-933
Author(s):  
Daniel Clarry
Keyword(s):  
Essential Feature ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Trust Property

AbstractOwnership is an essential feature of trusts that serves as a useful analytical and comparative tool in order to cross legal traditions and compare different legal institutions, which to a greater or lesser extent serve similar socio-economic and legal functions. The concentration on ownership enables one to burrow down into the normative roots of different legal traditions. This article comprises three substantive parts: first, characterizing ownership and the manner in which this concept distinguishes the civil and common law traditions; second, contextualizing ownership in relation to trusts from different legal systems; and, third, conceptualizing some contemporary challenges arising out of the divergent nature of ownership in the phenomenology of the trust paradigm, the value of the trust to comparative law and its effect on the civil law as a distinct tradition. It is argued that trusts necessarily involve the fiduciary administration of property and that ‘fiduciary ownership’ is a better shorthand description of the encumbered nature of trust property, rather than ‘dual’ or ‘split’ ownership, which is misleading and mistaken.

The European Trade Mark System

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Kur ◽  
Martin Senftleben
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Trade Mark ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
System P ◽  
Trade Mark Law ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
European Trade ◽  
Original Objective

Before the harmonization of trade mark law in the EU, the legal traditions in the Member States of the European Economic Community were divided into common law systems and civil law systems, with certain differences also prevailing between the latter. In all countries alike, the original objective underlying the protection of commercial signs had been to indicate property of goods offered in the marketplace or to enable national authorities to control the quality, kind, or amount of production. In the age of industrialization, the concept developed into the notion of signs indicating origin of goods stemming from private enterprises, with the accent being placed on different aspects of that concept. In civil law countries, the emphasis lay on indicating that a particular business had ‘ownership’ of a sign. Thus, the legislature saw its foremost task in establishing a secure and transparent system for the acquisition and maintenance of ownership, and offering trade mark owners the legal means necessary for defending the mark against illicit use by unauthorized others. In common law, the accent lay on the prevention of passing off, which was considered a task in the public interest rather than serving private commercial aims. In contrast to continental civil law, creating a public register and admitting private claims against infringement were not tantamount to acknowledging a proprietary right in trade marks. Instead, these measures were taken to efficiently support the public policy objectives underlying trade mark law.

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