Law & Humanities Blog |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2011 01:17 PM PDT The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the state of higher education among state and federal legislators. It notes that "Depending on how 'most educated' is defined, it could be argued that Virginia tops the nation, on the basis of its high percentage of lawmakers with both bachelor's and advanced degrees. The state ranks second-highest in both categories, right behind California for legislators with four-year degrees and on the heels of New Jersey for advanced degrees, with 89 percent and 58 percent, respectively." A number of members in many state houses swear allegiance to one alma mater, which might matter in terms of funding. Members of Congress are more diverse--nearly all have college degrees, and many go out of state to get their degrees (many to private schools). More than half of our Senators are attorneys. More here. And here's a map with stats. Commentary and analysis here.   |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2011 08:04 AM PDT Dennis Kim-Prieto, State University of New Jersey (Rutgers), School of Law (Newark), and Conrad Van Laer, University of Maastricht, have published The Possible Dream: Perfecting Bilingual Law Dictionaries by Distinguishing Better Examples from Bad. |
Here is the abstract.
As the practice of law crosses national (and linguistic) borders with increasing frequency, the need for tools that facilitate the transnational practice of law becomes more acute. Bilingual legal dictionaries (BLDs) are one critical such tool, as they offer access to legal systems as well as the languages of these systems. Unfortunately, librarians have offered scant criticism of BLDs, many of which are not particularly useful. This article summarizes critical problems with BLDs and offers an approach to resolving these problems by focusing upon the quality of the entries, or definitions, that BLDs provide.Download the paper from SSRN at the link.
How New Legal Terms Are Formed
Posted: 14 Jun 2011 08:01 AM PDT
Isabel A. Walbaum Robinson, University of Rome III, has published The 'Word Factory': A Study of the Processes Engaged in the Formation of Legal Terms in volume 1 of Opinio Juris in Comparatione (2011). Here is the abstract.
This paper explores the language of the law from the point of view of the factors that contribute to the building of its specialized lexicon and the options language offers to create, institutionalize and incorporate new words into the technical legal inventory. Sources of word-formation responsible for specialized lexicon accretion in the corpus are of two kinds: language-based and discipline-based. The former involves structure (syntax), meaning (semantics), and uses (pragmatics) of language and the processes engaged in word formation, such as compounding, trans-categorization, fusion, clipping, the creation of binomials and multi-word lexical units (henceforth, MLUs). The latter involves the creation of words engendered from within the discipline itself, such as landmark cases and professional contributions.Download the article from SSRN at the link.
As a language user, the legal professional is faced with two types of cognitive processing. On one hand, 'decoding' text meaning when carrying out language-related activities such as reading documents or listening to speech. On the other, 'encoding' language for the purpose of writing (e.g. briefs, opinions, articles) or interacting with a colleague, taking part in a debate or discussing a point of law. Awareness of both lexical and syntactic features of a language for specific purposes (henceforth, LSP), as well as its word-forming processes, provides the legal professional a vantage for interpreting, comparing and using the 'tools of the trade', legal terms. Word-formation is an important sector of linguistics that reflects back on the nature and characteristics of language itself. It gives an 'added dimension' to lawyers, in particular English as a Foreign Language (EFL) comparative lawyers, who fulfil professional obligations that call for the technical, rather than intuitive use of language.
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