Robin Stocks has altered the title of Carob to Carob (not a blog).

The question ‘Why not a blog?’ is answered ‘Blogs aren’t written in WinWord’.
If Rebecca Blood and others can handcode their sites, I fail to see why a Word for Windows file can’t be a blog.
Robin has said many things in the past that have made more sense than this!

He has started archiving entries under categories: ‘No Permalinks’.

This does mean that the much older Bonner Übersetzer- und Dolmetscherforum (Bonn translators’ and interpreters’ forum) is a blog, because it’s based on Blogger.

Carob lists a new translation blog, Translation ‘n Stuff (Werner), subtitled ‘Observations on trends in the translation market’. Now who could this possibly be? – is there more than one German translator in Canada with two native languages?

I mentioned Corp Law Blog recently on a language issue, among and between. Having described this as ‘the most trivial issue ever discussed on Corp Law Blog’, Mike had to publish a retraction the next day:

bq. Yesterday I discussed what I thought was “The Most Trivial Issue Ever Discussed on Corp Law Blog” — the use of “among” and “between” when referring to contracting parties. Judging by the volume of email I’ve received on this post, either the issue isn’t that trivial or Corp Law Blog readers love trivia. As one reader correctly predicted:

bq. I suspect you might get more mail on this “trivial” subject than on other, more weighty issues; we lawyers like nothing more than discussing language and usage.

Readers quoted Fowler, Garner and the OED.

Today, Corp Law Blog links to two sites of ‘alleged perps’.

Martha Stewart, a household name in the USA in more way than one, was charged with some white-collar crimes, and she apparently set up a website to put herself in a better light. Now one Richard Scrushy, who is in a similar position, has done the same thing.

Corp Law Blog compares:

bq. Whose is better? Scrushy’s site looks like a standard web template with a little tinkering; Martha’s, of course, is a masterpiece of tasteful design. Both sites purport to set the record straight, but Scrushy’s site strains credulity by misleadingly calling itself “News Service.” Martha’s, on the other hand, leaves us with the impression that it’s just her (and her gazillions of fans) talking.

A new issue of the German Law Journal is online.

They are publishing to a larger audience free of charge and would like to continue to do so. They would be interested in advice on potential funders.

I will paste the table of contents:

German Law Journal
Vol. 4 No. 11 (1 November 2003)

Table of Contents

Public Law
Religious Tolerance, Pluralist Society and the Neutrality of the State: The
Federal Constitutional Court’s Decision in the Headscarf Case, by Matthias
Mahlmann

Procedural Fairness in a Militant Democracy: The “Uprising of the De-cent”
Fails Before the Federal Constitutional Court, by Thilo Rensmann

Private Law
An Economic Analysis of Consumer Protection in Contract Law, by Stefan Haupt

European & International Law
The extradition of nationals: Comments on the extradition request for
Fujimori, by Arnd Düker

Review Essay ­ Bruno de Witte’s Ten Reflections on a Constitutional Treaty
for Europe, by Alicja Magdalena Herbowska and Carlos Hernández Ferreiro

Legal Culture
Article ­ California’s Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act and American
Preemption Doctrine, by Libby Adler

Book Review – Reflections on the Influences of German Administrative Law on
the Concept of Reasonableness in South African Law – a review of
Un-reasonableness as a Ground of Judicial Review in South Africa ­
Consti-tutional Challenges for South Africa’s Administrative Law, by Geo
Quinot

Book Review – Christina Möller, Völkerstrafrecht und Internationaler
Strafgerichtshof ­ kriminologische, straftheoretische und rechtspoliti-sche
Aspekte, by Christian Maierhöfer

Book Review ­ Stefan Griller (ed.), International Economic Governance and
Non-Economic Concerns: New Challenges for the International Legal Order, by
Tristan Baumé

Here is a problem an EN>DE translator enquired about:

bq. If the decree nisi was pronounced by a *district judge* and the respondent wishes to appeal, he or she must serve notice of appeal and set down the appeal at this court (this court ist ein County Court) within 14 days of the date of the decree nisi.
If the decree nisi was pronounced by a *judge* and the respondent wishes to appeal …………within 4 weeks…….

This is from an English decree nisi. The document is not headed ‘decree nisi’, but why make things easy? It is a confirmation that the parties can have a divorce – get a decree absolute – six weeks later, unless some objection exists (arrangements for the children not made is the most common).

Until a few years ago, the county court had a judge and a registrar. The registrar – one of the many registrars that exist in English law – was called a ‘judicial officer’, a person who was not a judge but had some judicial functions. He or she dealt with interlocutory proceedings and even decided simpler matters. Was sometimes translated into German as Rechtspfleger.

But then registrars were renamed district judges, and given more demanding work too, I think.

Now we have a document saysing ‘If the decree nisi was pronounced by a district judge’ or ‘If the decree nisi was pronounced by a judge’. This is mind-boggling. It seems to imply that the district judge is not a judge – but why call him one, then? It looks as if there has simply been a failure to adapt the form.

It would be OK if instead of judge they wrote ‘circuit judge’, but presumably it isn’t necessarily. It could certainly be a Recorder.

I was asked if it means Amtsrichter. Well, in England, judges aren’t usually assigned to just one court. OK, in the House of Lords and the Court of Appeal they are, but we have High Court judges who may just as well be sitting in the Crown Court.

Perhaps one might write ‘durch einen Rechtspfleger (district judge) … durch einen Richter…’ To put ‘(judge)’ as the English name would also be odd, as it’s a generic.

Of course, we don’t have a district court. Many people assume that if there is a district judge, there must be a district court. And also, there is a second kind of district judge: as well as lay magistrates, England has stipendiary magistrates in big towns. These are qualified lawyers who sit alone. They too have been renamed ‘district judge’.

It was striking that this week, murder trials began in England (at the Old Bailey in London) and in Germany (Eschweiler). In both cases, two children were murdered. In both cases, there were reports in the press for weeks and openly expressed public indignation about the murderers. In both cases, there are two defendants: in England, however, only one of the defendants, Ian Huntley, is being tried for murder – his then girlfriend, Maxine Carr, is charged with assisting an offender and conspiring to do acts with a tendency to pervert the course of public justice.

In the German trial, the defendants have admitted killing the two children. In the English trial, Huntley has admitted that the children died after entering his house.

The English report summarizes the case as introduced by the prosecution. The German report summarizes the indictment, which has a comparable function.

Here are the counts (Anklagepunkte) of the English case, quoted from the Independent:

bq. Count One – Ian Huntley is alone charged with murder. “The particulars are that on a day between August 3, 2002, and August 18, 2002, he murdered Jessica Aimee Chapman.” [left]
Count Two – Ian Huntley is alone charged with murder. ” … on a day between August 3, 2002, and August 18, 2002, he murdered Holly Marie Wells.” [right]
Count Three – Maxine Carr is charged with assisting an offender. “Ian Huntley having committed an arrestable offence, namely the murder of Jessica Chapman, Maxine Carr, between August 3, 2002, and August 18, 2002, knowing or believing the said Ian Huntley had committed the said offence, … she provided false accounts of her whereabouts for Ian Huntley on August 4, 2002, and August 5, 2002, with intent to impede the prosecution of Ian Huntley.”
Count Four – Maxine Carr faces a similar charge of assisting an offender in the case of Holly Wells.
Count Five – Maxine Carr is charged with conspiracy to do acts tending or intended to pervert the course of public justice. “She conspired with Ian Huntley to do acts which had a tendency to pervert the course of public justice in that they agreed they would falsely maintain to police that the said Maxine Carr was in Soham in Cambridgeshire on August 4, 2002, and on August 5, 2002, and therefore they were able to corroborate the account of the said Ian Huntley.”

It was unexpected (to me) in the English report that the girls died immediately or soon after going into Huntley’s house.

The jury were told they would be going to look at the location.

English Crown Court trial: one judge and 12 jurors. German Schwurgericht trial: 3 professional judges and 2 lay judges.

In an entry on June 3rd, I mentioned the McKenzie friend:

The Times Online (and offline) law section today reports that the Legal Aid Practitioners’ Group gave an award to Jeffrey Gordon (69), who was a legal aid solicitor for over 50 years and is one of only 30 men who have completed all 30 London Marathons. He created the idea of the Mackenzie friend / Mackenzie person, someone who helps a party to a court case if that party has no lawyer.

There was some discussion in the comments, and AMM said he had heard Ian Hanger, the original McKenzie friend and a QC in Queensland, talk at a conference in Australia.

Now there is a further comment by Ian Hanger himself, who found this entry:

I am McKenzie’s friend. I came across this site when surfing the net for the name of my old employer Jeffrey Gordon. My version of events is set out in an article by my close friend Justice Richard Chesterman who recently wrote an article about the case published in the Queensland Bar News. It’s a very well written article. If anyone would like it please provide your email address.
Cheers
Ian Hanger QC

Fancy this weblog being discovered by a person whose role has become part of legal terminology! I will find out if I can perhaps put this article in the archives here.