Comparative Law and Language (e-ISSN 2785-7417) est une revue scientifique à comité de lecture qui vise à enrichir le débat scientifique sur les relations entre le droit et le langage, au sein de différents systèmes juridiques nationaux et supranationaux, dans une perspective comparative. Publiée par l’Université de Trente, elle paraît deux fois par an.
Éditorial de Comparative Law and Language, vol. 4, n° 2, décembre 2025.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Caterina Bergomi (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
“Dire la Giustizia: Lingue, Culture e Traduzioni del Diritto”
This contribution is dedicated to the conference Dire la Giustizia: lingue, culture e traduzioni del diritto, held on November 19, 2025 at the University of Milan.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Jan Engberg (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
La traduzione giuridica costituisce un ambito in cui emergono con particolare evidenza le implicazioni del multilinguismo istituzionale e della diversità dei sistemi normativi. Il contributo analizza l’evoluzione dei modelli traduttivi nei contesti nazionali plurilingui e nell’Unione europea, tradizionalmente caratterizzati rispettivamente da un approccio bottom-up e da uno top-down. L’esame degli strumenti terminologici e delle pratiche operative mostra come in ambito UE si stia sviluppando una crescente sensibilità comparativa, che affianca senza sostituirlo il modello tradizionale orientato all’uniformità linguistica. Attraverso esempi tratti dall’esperienza nel contesto bilingue della Provincia autonoma di Bolzano/Bozen e nelle istituzioni europee, il contributo mette in luce convergenze e divergenze nelle modalità di affrontare i problemi terminologici, da cui emerge un quadro dinamico.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Francesca Bullo (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Normative and Ideological Coding in the Legal Register
This paper proposes a methodological approach to the study of legal language, grounded in the framework developed by the Croatian and Yugoslav legal scholar Nikola Visković in his book Jezik prava (The Language of the Law), published in Zagreb in 1989. Visković approaches legal language from semiotic and communicative perspectives. We adapt his framework to examine nineteenth‑century Serbian legal texts dating from 1835 to 1898. Our starting assumption is that legal language is double‑coded: it operates simultaneously with a natural‑language code (in this case, the nineteenth‑century Serbian literary idiom) and with a distinct legal code. A second assumption distinguishes the legal norm as a deep, universal structure from the legal provision, which is its surface representation. This distinction enables us to identify various surface realizations of the basic if–then legal norm. The third assumption differentiates normative from ideological coding in legal texts: we contend that the basic if–then form can be reconstructed in every legal text, while what remains constitutes the ideological residue. This does not imply that ideological coding is absent from the underlying form of the legal norm, but rather that the basic legal norm exhibits a degree of universality across different legal language corpora. Nineteenth‑century Serbian legal texts provide a particularly clear illustration of these claims, especially those produced during the era of the Ustavobranitelji (literally, the Defenders of the Constitution). In that period, preambles were often lengthy and comprised both obligatory normative elements and motivational passages that were not required by the legal norm but encoded ideological, political, and cultural contextual information.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Jelena Pavlović Jovanović, Milan Todorović (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Law is forbidding, correcting, punishing, helping, restoring, rewarding. Law needs tools, of other disciplines too. Language [of law too] is a means of communication and of isolation (wanted or imposed). Expressing law, interpreting law, implementing law, exploiting law needs all sorts of language. Law and economics discover and uncover rational (though still often irrational) choices. Judicial decisions are political decisions, critical legal studies point out. Law is always influenced by politics. Politics can be benefactor and destructor. Rituals as expressions of living law may have double (or multiple) meaning. Law is always influenced by religion – either explicitly or implicitly. Convivencia in the same country of people of different religions and, accordingly, application of different laws of civil status (for example in Liban, in Greece, etc.) is a fact. First nations (in Latin America, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Caribbean, etc.) live together (not really, not always in an idoneous way) with former colonizers and immigrants. Is there a real Convivencia of laws, there (as most countries in Africa have almost managed to achieve), or primacy of one (central) law and exclusion of the others? In many countries, there are different rules for the same issues, according to the particular problems of the persons to whom they apply – hypothetically aiming at the same protection(?). Is it an opposite discrimination or just a means of organizing the way to live together? Co-existence, Com-petition, Com-paring, Con-vivencia: Harmony is feasible, is possible, is not alchemy, it respects and requires the different, in order to be a rich image of life.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Elina Moustaira (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Dante and the Methods of Comparative Law
The origin of comparative law as a science is generally attributed to 1900, when Lambert and Saleilles organized the first International Conference of Comparative Law during the Paris World Expo. However, it is interesting to note that Dante, within his works, appears as a comparatist, albeit ante litteram. This emerges, in particular, in light of the use of comparative methods and techniques, with a particular reference to the text and the framework of the Divine Comedy, as well as the way he navigates his journey. In doing so, Dante highlights some key pillars of comparative law and its most topical issues, such as legal translation, the methods and purposes of comparative law, the relevance of law, and its applications of the conscious and/or unconscious influences of different cultural factors.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Laura Maria Franciosi (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
L’intelligibilité des textes de spécialité à l’exemple du rapport d’expertise français
Le rapport d’expertise constitue l’aboutissement de la mission d’expert. Il s’agit d’un texte spécialisé destiné à être exploité, c’est-à-dire contextualisé et interprété, par ses différents destinataires. Pour réaliser cette interprétation, les destinataires du rapport disposent de connaissances et d’un horizon culturel hétérogènes, d’une part, et d’autre part, d’un intérêt pratique à comprendre un rapport d’expertise. C’est à ce titre que se pose la question de son intelligibilité. Si l’intelligibilité d’un texte est largement tributaire de la maîtrise des formes linguistiques par l’expert, elle demeure une notion difficile à appréhender en raison, notamment, de ses liens avec les notions de compréhension et de pertinence. Dans la partie théorique du présent article, il s’agira d’appréhender la notion d’intelligibilité dans son articulation avec la compréhension et la pertinence. La seconde partie réserve une large place aux exemples pratiques extraits des textes de rapport d’expertise authentiques. Elle vise à illustrer l’importance de la qualité de l’expression linguistique au regard de la qualité de l’avis d’expert, d’une part, et d’autre part, à souligner la difficulté que représente la diversité de destinataires d’un rapport d’expertise.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Margarete Flöter-Durr (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Éditorial de Comparative Law and Language, vol. 4, n° 1, juin 2025.
Book Review: “LEGISLEULAB der Europäischen Rechtslinguistik / LEGISLEULAB for the European Legal Linguistics 2020-2023”
This book review discusses four volumes with almost identical names that were published between 2021 and 2024. They are all about the legal-linguistic analysis of EU texts and legislative procedures. While I find the topic of the volumes very interesting also for the readers of this journal, I was sceptical about the fact that they are all based on the same summer school sessions and document the work carried out during them. In my review, I will address the reasons for my scepticism, but also demonstrate why characteristics of the volumes mitigate it.
The Application of Comparative Law Methods in the Legal Translation Process
This paper aims to provide an overview of contemporary comparative law methods and demonstrate their potential for use in legal translation. While it focuses on a theoretical framework for such applications (except for one practical example), it has been preceded by other studies in which the framework proposed was tested based on examples from Polish-English legal translation. The present paper is, in particular, intended to share some of the findings of the author’s research to date with a wider international audience. It needs to be noted that although numerous authors in the field of legal translation studies present the view that comparative law and legal translation are closely related, they usually do not offer a broader overview of comparative law methods or suggest ways in which these methods are supposed to be used by translators. When such references do occur, they mainly concern the traditional functional method without considering the more pluralistic approaches that have emerged in comparative law in the last three decades. The paper proposes to distinguish the general method and the specific methods of comparative law and points to possible ways of adapting them for legal translation purposes as part of a process named ‘translational comparative legal analysis’. It also suggests that translators and translation scholars should more often tap into comparative law methodology in search of solutions useful for legal translation purposes.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Przemysław Kusik (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Luxembourgish Language Law and Policy
This article examines language law and policy in the only EU Member State that has a trilingual official language policy in force throughout its territory. Under Luxembourg law, Luxembourgish is designated as the ‘national language’. French, on the other hand, is designated as the ‘legislative language’. In addition, Luxembourgish, French and German are the three ‘administrative and court languages’. The present study adopts a law in context approach, integrating the legal analysis of this unique language policy with an overview of the historical background and data on actual language use and practices. The main challenge of Luxembourg’s language policy is highlighted, namely finding a balance between national identity and social cohesion.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Stefaan van der Jeught (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
An Insight into Linguistic Rights Before the Courts and in Public Education in the United States of America
This article aims to give a deeper insight in the linguistic rights in the United States of America (United States or US). In particular, it will analyze how these rights are protected and reflect on its effectiveness. Linguistic rights are especially important in multilingual and multicultural societies. The United States are such a society. However, we will see that the United States are evolving more towards a monolingual society, or at least are intentionally trying to implement the use of a sole language in the public sphere, through various legal and other means. This article consists of three parts. First, it will give an overview of what linguistic rights are and discuss their importance. Furthermore, it will discuss why English is the predominant language in the country today and what other languages play an important role. Second, it will lay out how linguistic rights are enshrined in the legal sphere and how these are protected. In this part, the article will focus on the legal frameworks for such rights and will take a closer look at how such rights are protected before the United States courts (both at the state and federal level). Special attention is also placed on linguistic minorities and protections for Native languages. When looking at protections before the US courts, the article will draw upon relevant case law in the matter. Finally, the article will look at the protection of linguistic rights in public education. In doing so, it will again rely on relevant case law in that regard, as well as public policy and other instruments to bring about such protections. Again, here we will have a closer look at linguistic minorities and Native languages.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Loreno D’Angelo (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
European States and Status of State Languages De Jure and De Facto
This article deals with the issue of understanding the term ‘state language’ through the lens of the relationship between the concepts De Jure and De Facto. Based on their possible relationship which occurred at the constitutional level and practice of European states, I created four groups (De Jure and De Facto are the same, non De Jure but De Facto, transition group, and special cases of De Jure and De Facto). By using these four groups, I was able to categorize a research sample consisting of 42 European countries. This not only managed to portray the linguistic situation regarding state languages in Europe but also offered one of the supporting options for determining, within the framework of official language designation and language planning, which of the dominant languages in a country could truly be the state language. The main output of this article is thus a table that divides the 42 states into these four groups, containing data on the state language and its constitutional status for each state.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Barbora Tomečková (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Repenser les droits linguistiques dans l’ordre international
Dans un monde où la maitrise de la langue dominante devient un prérequis implicite de l’inclusion sociale et citoyenne, les droits linguistiques demeurent relégués à la marge du droit international. Leur reconnaissance partielle, souvent subordonnée à d’autres libertés fondamentales comme la non-discrimination ou la liberté d’expression, les enferme dans un statut dérivé et résiduel, les réduisant à de simples accessoires fonctionnels du vivre-ensemble. Pourtant, parler sa langue ne relève pas d’un privilège identitaire, mais d’un droit humain fondamental – un droit à l’existence, à la mémoire, à la dignité. À travers l’analyse croisée des politiques migratoires, des jurisprudences nationales et internationales, ainsi que des dispositifs normatifs régionaux, ce travail interroge la portée réelle des garanties offertes aux communautés linguistiques. L’étude s’attache à déconstruire la hiérarchie implicite qui oppose les droits dits « universels » aux droits dits « culturels », et met en lumière les logiques d’exclusion que cette dichotomie produit. Elle défend l’idée que les droits linguistiques doivent être pensés non comme des concessions adaptatives, mais comme des piliers normatifs à part entière – indissociables de la liberté d’expression, du droit à un procès équitable ou encore de la participation politique effective. À rebours des lectures fonctionnalistes, ce papier plaide pour une réinscription de la langue dans l’architecture centrale des droits humains : non pas simplement comme un outil de communication, mais comme un vecteur de reconnaissance et de pluralité démocratique.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Indira Boutier (2025) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Éditorial de Comparative Law and Language, vol. 3, n° 2, décembre 2024.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Comparative Law and Language (2024) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Dal paradigma dell’interpretazione a quello della traduzione
I concetti di interpretazione e traduzione offrono al giurista una lente preziosa attraverso la quale esaminare tanto il passato, quanto lo stato attuale del diritto. Sebbene ognuna di queste discipline abbia un proprio, distinto rapporto con il diritto, insieme rivelano sinergie e cambiamenti significativi all’interno del fenomeno giuridico. Sebbene l’interpretazione e la traduzione condividano molte somiglianze, si differenziano altresì per molti aspetti: il saggio si concentra su alcuni punti essenziali di sovrapposizione e divergenza tra i due concetti, con l’obiettivo di leggere l’interpretazione e la traduzione alla luce delle profonde innovazioni che caratterizzano il panorama giuridico attuale.
Si les droits linguistiques des accusés dans les procédures pénales menées devant les juridictions nationales et internationales sont bien établis, il existe d’autres participants aux procédures dont la participation linguistique doit être assurée pour que les exigences en matière de droits de l’homme soient respectées. Ce document se concentre sur les droits linguistiques des victimes devant la CPI, d’une part, et sur les services linguistiques destinés à faire respecter ces droits, d’autre part. Ces services linguistiques comprennent notamment le recrutement et la formation d’interprètes paraprofessionnels, ainsi que le travail terminologique nécessaire dans les langues dites de situation.
A Three-Step Strategy for Teaching Contract Drafting
The main purpose of this article is to provide a three-step strategy for teaching contract drafting. The first step focuses on the negotiation of a business deal and on understanding the needs and objectives of the contracting parties. The second step deals with the practical process of drafting a contract, looking at contract structure and types of contract clauses. Finally, the third step describes the jurilinguistic key features, which provide a linguistic frame to the agreement. Such a multifaceted approach enables teachers and students to picture the teaching process from a legal and jurilinguistic perspectives, as well as to consider contract drafting from the initial business deal and its negotiations to a range of details and specific text needed to be included in the written agreement. The set of legal documents selected for this paper is a corpus of five UK and five US sale and purchase agreements the subjects of which represent goods and services as well as share capital. Each step of the strategy includes a number of exercises that teachers can use with students for them to gain a better understanding of legal and linguistic aspects of contract drafting. The students mentioned in the paper include law students from universities in Paris, France, studying legal English and legal translation courses as well as practising lawyers who have to deal with contract drafting in English.
The Deaf as a Linguistic Minority in Poland
The article aims to introduce the issue of Deaf language rights in Poland. It is a linguistic minority that derives its identity from deafness, and its culture is based on Polish Sign Language. The Deaf linguistic minority, both in the world and in Poland, face discrimination because of their language. Therefore, we analyze the relationship between deafness and disability, outline the complexities of Deaf/Deaf community as a linguistic minority, and then contextualize Deafness and Polish Sign Language within a legal framework. An analysis of the laws and initiatives undertaken by the Deaf community in Poland shows that the current status of the Deaf in Poland is still far from satisfactory with regard to their access to goods, services and full enjoyment of their civil rights due to challenges in accessing information. An analysis of initiatives undertaken by the Deaf shows that there is a growing awareness among the Deaf community of their civil rights. These activities are inspired by the changes taking place in other countries and the initiatives of international organizations for the Deaf.
Le génocide dans les Statuts de Rome traduits
En 1972, l’arabe devint l’une des cinq langues officielles des Nations Unies. Les documents conçus par cette organisation internationale furent désormais traduits en arabe, restituant la trame terminologique/notionnelle prévue qui sera plus tard également utilisée par le Statut de Rome de la Cour pénale internationale. Bien que cette langue fût longtemps reliée aux référents religieux et tribaux, elle fait aujourd’hui partie intégrante du droit international, fondé sur un paradigme positif et universel. Dès lors, les termes arabes proposés en guise de traduction aux notions et principes du droit international s’émancipèrent progressivement de leur mémoire sémantique, référentiels religieux et reminiscences tribales. Afin de relater une telle émancipation, nous examinerons, à travers cette étude, l’équivalent arabe du terme génocide en analysant les origines étymologiques, les fonctions pragmatiques et les limites au sein de la logosphère arabe classique et moderne. Pour cela, nous nous réfèrerons au Statut de Rome dans ses versions française, anglaise et arabe, afin de mettre en lumière les ressemblances et dissemblances du transfert notionnel opéré sur ce principe propre au droit pénal international. La problématique structurante de cette étude sera centrée sur la capacité terminologique de l’arabe à exprimer le contenu cognitif et juridique du terme génocide. Autrement dit, l’arabe est-il en mesure d’en fournir une acception positive conforme aux postulats juridiques, philosophiques et sociaux du Statut de Rome ? L’équivalent arabe proposé est-il capable de rompre avec sa mémoire sémantique et l’imaginaire collectif lui étant associé ?
Book Review: “Introduction to Comparative Law, 2nd edition” by Jaakko Husa
The purpose of this review is to briefly explore some of the main features in Jaakko Husa’s Introduction to Comparative Law (2nd edition, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2023, ISBN 978-1-50996-356-0) from a Hispanic-American comparatist perspective, considering the cultural context and, above all, the global trends in the circulation of legal knowledge.
Literature Review: The Language of the Juridification Process of Animal Law
The article provides for a literature review concerning the language of the juridification process of animal law. It considers the interaction between the increasing legal protection of animals and the use of definitions in legal literature. Without conducting a thorough examination of all the current English-language literature, it provides with some examples, showing the key trend lines.
In various countries, languages that qualify as “recognised languages” are enshrined in their respective legal frameworks. This designation remains abstract and indeterminate, making it a challenge to precisely define the official status of such recognised languages, particularly in the case of sign languages. The analysis of various legislation related to sign languages highlights commonalities in the formulation of national laws in how they uphold fundamental principles. Sign languages may or may not benefit from features of linguistic officiality, both formally and materially, compared to officially proclaimed spoken languages. Additionally, sign languages align with distinctive elements of linguistic minority rights. In other words, they are not clearly qualified as genuine official languages, like spoken languages, and simultaneously, are not expressly considered minority languages, despite some analogies. It is argued that it is feasible to develop a legal theory called asymmetric linguistic officiality of sign language. Regarding the legal statuses of sign languages, treating them as a third legal category of linguistic officiality in an intersectional sense or, better yet, addressing them as a tertium genus that specifies issues inherent to sign languages based on legal circumstances related to the rights of deaf people.
Law Is Trapped in History and History Is Trapped in Law
This paper explores the reciprocal relationship between law and history, highlighting how historical beliefs influence political and legal decision-making. This interdependence is evident in the historical development of legal systems, the incorporation of historical discourse in legal texts, and the legal governance of historical matters. The paper illustrates the integration of historical dimensions and myths into constitutional imaginaries, particularly in Hungary and Poland. There, historical beliefs have driven transformations towards illiberal national myths, influencing political and legal reforms. The study underscores the relevance for legal and constitutional scholars not to overlook the reciprocal relationship between law and history.
« Splendeur et misère » du multilinguisme institutionnel de l’Union européenne
Fière de son régime multilingue unique, qui garantit l’accès à la législation européenne dans 24 versions linguistiques égales, l’Union européenne apparaît au monde extérieur comme un idéal du multilinguisme. La consécration claire du régime linguistique multilingue égalitaire dans les actes du droit primaire et secondaire de l’UE représente sa « splendeur ». Toutefois, considéré de l’intérieur, cette image idyllique s’estompe. En effet, le multilinguisme préconisé par les textes est en train de disparaître dans les faits, l’anglais étant devenu la langue de travail avec une prédominance écrasante au sein des institutions de l’UE, comme le montre le Rapport Lequesne préparé par la présidence française au Conseil de l’UE en 2022. La « misère » de la pratique monolingue n’est pourtant pas majoritairement ressentie comme problématique, mais comme une approche pragmatique dictée par diverses contraintes du régime linguistique théorique se manifestant notamment au niveau technique et budgétaire. Or, ladite situation est non seulement contraire aux règles, mais elle va également à l’encontre de l’intégration européenne en tant que telle.
Preferred Name in the Brazilian Legal System
The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of gender prejudice and discrimination by examining the linguistic and legal aspects of the inclusion of the preferred name (nome social, in Brazilian Portuguese) in the Brazilian legal system. A preferred name refers to the name chosen by a transgender person to be used in place of their registered name. In this discussion, we analyze federal bills, legal decisions, and regulations that have, from 2006 to 2022, contributed to the incorporation of the preferred name into various types of texts in Brazil. We also consider the results of studies that have examined the use of preferred names in the Brazilian media. The data analysis demonstrates that, despite the history of the establishment of this institution being marked by various instances of discrimination and violence, both in legal documents and in the media, the norms related to preferred names have simultaneously represented a significant stride for the public authorities and society to pay more attention to recognizing the rights of transgender individuals. In the case of legal decisions, there has also been a shift in the resolution of conflicts, favoring the principles of free name choice, self-identity determination, and human dignity.
Semantical Discordances of Comparison in Law Negatively Defined
Defining comparative law is difficult simply because it is polysemic and contingent in nature. A framework for refinement, differentiation and affirmation is represented by the negative paradigm. Comparative law’s inadequacy to designate the subject is best exemplified by the following neologism, ‘Comparative Law Methodology’. It is argued the latter phrase is distinguished from the former by a redundant lexical addition. Thus, this triad translates a latent divide between object and method already contained in the former idiom. Morphological observations of the distinctive features of a terminology indicate these can be affected alternatively from subservience to precedence by diachronic semantical variations. Modern comparatists naturally concerned with the ascertainment of explicit methodological frameworks extending beyond tacit use improperly refer to this tautological expression.
Éditorial de Comparative Law and Language, vol. 2, n° 2, décembre 2023.
Merci de créditer les auteurs lors de toute citation : Comparative Law and Language (2023) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Éditorial de Comparative Law and Language, vol. 3, n° 1, juin 2024.
The Word (‘Parola’) and the Law of the European Union
The essay explores the relationship between language and law in the European Union (EU) through a lens focused on the term parola (la parole, word). The article intends to underline the role of effective multilingualism as a fundamental element of protection not only of national languages, but of European Union law itself; history teaches how multilingualism works as a barrier to national juridical models conveyed within EU law through a prevailing lingua franca. It addresses the challenges inherent in multilingualism, and explores the nuanced process of translation and adaptation, in which legal concepts are subject to semantic casts. Highlighting the collaborative efforts among jurists and linguists to address the challenges in multilingual legal frameworks, it is also intended to underline how the path towards a shared legal language inspires not only intra-EU, but global dialogues.