The question arose last week how to translate the Austrian court names. Reference was made to Hausmaninger’s book on The Austrian Legal System.

Austrian civil and criminal courts:

Bezirksgericht (Hausmaninger: District Courts)
Landesgericht (Hausmaninger: Regional Courts)
Oberlandesgericht (Hausmaninger: Court of Appeals)
Oberster Gerichtshof (Hausmaninger: Supreme Court)

These could be handled in exactly the same way as the German courts – see last entry.

Problems with the Hausmaninger suggestions: district court is unclear; supreme court may suggest a constitutional court, but there is also the Verfassungsgerichtshof.

Austria has Bundesländer – I was told that these are called provinces in English. I have not investigated this yet.

I have actually encountered a Kreisgericht, which still existed ten years ago as a rare example, just as I’ve had to translate Kreisgericht (I think) in Saxony after 1990.

No links here, except to my earlier entry.

This is my latest idea about handling the names of German courts in translations.
It only matters where the court name is important.

The German name has to be mentioned at least once.

Some of these suggestions are expansions of the Auswärtiges Amt suggestions.

F = first mention
L = later mentions

System 1

Amtsgericht
F Local court of first instance (Amtsgericht)
L Local court

Landgericht
F Regional court of first instance (Landgericht)
L Regional court
If the Landgericht is acting as an appellate court, then just Regional court throughout

Oberlandesgericht
F Higher regional court of appeal (Oberlandesgericht) *
L Higher regional court
If the Oberlandesgericht is acting as a court of first instance, then just Higher regional court throughout

Bundesgerichtshof
Federal Court of Justice

System 2

Amtsgericht
F Amtsgericht (lower trial court OR local court of first instance)
L Amtsgericht

Landgericht
F Landgericht (higher trial court OR regional court of first instance)
L Landgericht

Oberlandesgericht
F Oberlandesgericht (intermediate court of appeal OR Higher regional court of appeal)
L Oberlandesgericht

Bundesgerichtshof
EITHER Federal Court of Justice OR Bundesgerichtshof

What is a district court? Some people like to translate Amtsgericht or Landgericht as district court. But those are different. And so are the three district courts I know of.

There are district courts in Scotland.

bq. Currently there are 30 District Courts in Scotland. The District Court is at the bottom end of the court hierarchy in Scotland. It deals only with summary criminal matters. There are also certain offences, for example, an assault resulting in a broken bone, which cannot be heard in the District Court but must go to the Sheriff Court. The District Court can imprison for up to 60 days and impose a fine of up to level 4 (presently £2,500). The most common types of offences to be dealt with in the District Court are breach of the peace, assault, vandalism, theft (but not theft by housebreaking), speeding, vehicle excise, T.V. licencing, electricity fraud and other miscellaneous road traffic offences. There are a lot of other offences dealt with in the District Court on a less regular basis.

bq. The District Court is a lay court where a Justice of the Peace who is a lay person sits with a legally qualified clerk (in some areas Justices sit in threes). The only exception to this is stipendiary magistrate courts in Glasgow where the stipendiary magistrate sits on his/her own and is legally qualified and has the same powers as a sheriff who is sitting summarily (the difference between summary procedure and solemn procedure is that in summary procedure the judge sits on his own and in solemn procedure the judge sits with a jury).

This is rather like an English magistrates’ court – perhaps too peculiar to be used as a translation of Amtsgericht, and certainly too low in the hierarchy for Landgericht. Continue reading →

Via Delia Venables, an Irish lawyer’s blog: maccann.com. Entries only about one a month – I wouldn’t mind more. Strong on opinions.

The blogger, Seán Mac Cann, posts more frequently on his personal (non-legal) blog.

Both use frames, so I set my browser to open links in a new window.

La-Legal.com or Louisiana Legal now has a site for links called LegalBeetle (via Handakte WebLAWg), allegedly with over 20,000 links.

It has the irritating technique of presenting me all the headers in German, even though my browser’s preferred language is English. I would prefer English, German is OK too, but there are plenty of people in Germany who would rather read English or who don’t even understand German. It’s possible to register, so possibly that would help.

LATER REMARK: it seems I was too hasty, as so often. This time it gave me English headings, and there are flags at the bottom of the page so you can choose the language. I take it all back (but don’t know how to do strikeout – I would leave my earlier text there, but crossed out).

Further to the Scottish law sites mentioned recently. I have two glossaries of Scottish legal terms:

Green’s Glossary of Scottish Legal Terms, by A.G.M.Duncan, 1992, ISBN 0 414 01001 9

and Glossary: Scottish Legal Terms, Latin Maxims and European Community Legal Terms, published by Butterworths and The Law Society of Scotland, 1988, ISBN 0 406 02057 4 (the EU terms are in a separate section at the back)

Then there is Collins Dictionary of Law, by W.J. Stewart, 2nd ed. 2001, ISBN 0 00 710294, one of those paperback dictionaries usually of English legal terms that are not bad but not as comprehensive as Black’s for the USA or Creifelds for Germany. But Collins has a lot of Scottish terms in it, which is unusual. Collins can even be got as an e-book (Microsoft Reader).

I think the Butterworths must be out of print (I don’t even know if Butterworths have kept their name after being bought up by someone else).

Here’s a small electronic glossary, produced by the BBC in connection with the Lockerbie trial, which was governed by Scottish law (they declared a bit of the Netherlands Scottish land for the purpose). Here another glossary. Continue reading →