Times Online Style Guide: the Courts

The Times Online Style Guide has a section on the courts and lawyers that I remember using once with students. It’s not binding, of course, just a house style guide, and it relates only to Britain, but it’s interesting to look at.
It doesn’t know that the Divisional Court of the Queen’s Bench Division is now called the Administrative Court when dealing with judicial review, but then it may not have been updated since 2000.

bq. Court of Appeal judges are Lords Justices of Appeal. Use Lord Justice Bean throughout, or out of court context, Sir John Bean. Note Lady Justice Butler-Sloss, although now she is President of the Family Division, she is styled Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. Also Lord Justice Brooke (not Brook).

She did call herself Lord Justice for a while, but eventually she gave in to common sense.This is nice:

bq. Defendants take their Mr, Mrs etc until they are convicted (see appellations, paragraph f).

Here some advice:

bq. Latin phrases go in roman, eg, mandamus, habeas corpus, certiorari etc, but maxims take italic, eg, caveat emptor.

But surely mandamus and certiorari have been renamed too (mandatory order, quashing order).

I sometimes wish they wouldn’t keep renaming things. I continue to use plaintiff rather than claimant in most of my translations, and custody of children instead of parental responsibility.

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