I was checking up that my guess was correct – selbst gelesen, genehmigt und unterschrieben – they’re not all in Dieter Meyer, not even b.b., but that’s here – when I came across a statement about coffin stealing:

So entschloss ich mich, im Februar 2000 schon, abends den Sarg in meinen Kombi zu laden – am Besten im Dunkeln – und ihn zur Schreinerei Kunz zu bringen. Die Dinger waren ja wie neu. Und ob der Verblichene mit oder ohne Kiste die Rutsche “ins Fegefeuer” bewältigt, das ist doch egal. Die Angehörigen wissen ja nicht einmal, wie das bei uns normal zugeht. Denen ist das doch egal. Und den Toten ja ohnehin. Versteht sich doch von selbst, oder?
Nun ja, die Särge wurden dann beim Kunz noch mal überpoliert und dann für 4000,- DM im Schnitt – üblicher Preis heute – verkauft, richtig so mit Mehrwertsteuer, Rechnung und so. Hat dem Kunz nur halt viel Arbeit gespart, und natürlich das ganze Material, Holz, Lacke und so. Und der Erlös wurde zwischen uns geteilt.

Es ist richtig, dass ich zweimal mit so ‘nem Sarg hinter mir im Auto kontrolliert worden bin. Das war Karfreitag 2001 und dann noch mal am 1. Juli 2001 – da ist mir so ein Heini reingefahren in das Auto. Die letzten Särge habe ich in den Fällen Arndt und Hoeriz “geklemmt”.
Selbst gelesen, genehmigt, und unterschrieben: Noethen

This turns out to be a mock trial staged with trainee lawyers in Frankfurt am Main. It’s based on a genuine case but has a theatrical purpose rather than a training purppose. It even has an English page, although not of the defendant’s statement.

Telemedicus has an entry on Wikipedia in deutschen Gerichtsurteilen. It refers to the German Wikipedia article on the subject. It says that the Bundesverfassungsgericht doesn’t cite Wikipedia, but it does cite weblogs (link to LAWgical), on the topic of dual nationality for Turks.

Here is the Unabhängiger Verwaltungssenat des Landes Oberösterreich:

Der offene Boden zwischen Gemüsepflanzen, Blumen, Sträuchern und Bäumen wird hierbei mit organischem Material wie etwa Rasenschnitt, Beinwellblättern oder anderen Gartenabfällen bedeckt (vgl. www.wikipedia.org).

There is an English Wikipedia article on the same subject, and a link from there leads to an article on when it is appropriate to quote Wikipedia, plus footnotes discussing various citations.

For the UK, I did a search of BAILII and found only 11 hits. Some were for the European Court of Human Rights, and the others were cases where one of the parties cited Wikipedia.

The ECHR does cite Wikipedia on the ethnic composition of Latvia.

A comment to the previous entry on legal entity mentions the term juridical person, which gets many ghits, although not all on English or U.S. sites.

Here’s a definition from the OECD site:

A juridical person, in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), means any legal entity duly constituted or otherwise organised under applicable law, whether for profit or otherwise, and whether privately-owned or governmentally-owned, including any corporation, trust, partnership, joint venture, sole proprietorship or association.

That’s a wider definition than that for legal person. Note the use of legal entity in the definition as the broader term.

See also Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of Law:

juridical person n, in the civil law of Louisiana: an entity (as a partnership or corporation) that is given rights and responsibilities – compare NATURAL PERSON

I don’t use this term when translating into English myself, but I would certainly take it as a synonym in context.

I looked at Black’s Legal Dictionary, but I don’t find much clarification there.

The OED has the first usage of juridical person in 1900, whereas juridical in other contexts is cited from 1502.

Looking at the OED for person, I find this sense under 6.a:

A human being (natural person) or body corporate or corporation (artificial person), having rights and duties recognized by the law.
1444 Rolls of Parlt. V. 75/1 And þey [the Master & Brethren of the Hospital] by that same name mowe be persones able to purchase Londez and Tenementz of all manere persones. 1475 Ibid. VI. 150/1 Any persone Temporell, corporat or not corporat. 1704 J. Harris Lex. Techn. I. s.v., A Writ that lies for Prebendaries, or other Spiritual Persons. 1765 Blackstone Comm. I. i. 123 Natural persons are such as the God of nature formed us; artificial are such as are created and devised by human laws for the purposes of society and government; which are called corporations or bodies politic. 1768–74 Tucker Lt. Nat. (1834) II. 188 A crowd is no distinct existence,+but if the same people be erected into a corporation, there is a new existence superadded; and they become a person in law capable to sue and be sued [etc.]. 1833 Act. 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 74 §1 The word ‘Person’ shall extend to a Body Politic, Corporate, or Collegiate, as well as an Individual.

6.b is Euphemistically, the genitals.

1824 Act 5 Geo. IV c. 83 §4 Every Person wilfully, openly, lewdly and obscenely exposing his Person in any Street, Road or public Highway, or in View thereof, or in any place of public Resort, with intent to insult any Female+, shall be deemed a Rogue and Vagabond within the true Intent and Meaning of this Act.

Legal entity has two possible meanings for me, summed up by Wikipedia:

The term legal entity is sometimes used:
* to refer to a juristic person, an artificial entity that the law treats for some purposes as if it were a person, such as an incorporated organization.
* as a general term to describe all entities recognized by the law, including both juristic and natural persons.

What is called a juristic person is also called a legal person, an artificial person or a corporation (I use British English unless otherwise indicated). Company law books often write of corporate personality (this may be corporate personhood in the USA, since Wikipedia also tells me that corporate personality is another term for multiple personality disorder, which sounds more like a partnership than a company).

The first meaning would include a private or public limited company, a GmbH, an AG.
The second meaning would include all those, but also natural persons, and even groups of persons such as partnerships.

The context should make the meaning clear, however.

This old ProZ question on translating legal entity into German illustrates the pitfalls of legal translation:

Ein schöner Ausdruck! Reicht aus, hier von einer “Unternehmung” zu sprechen?
Company code (Buchungskreis): this is a legal entity to which accounting data refers. There are three company codes:
A010 Aniello Entsorgungswerke
A020 Aniello Klärwerke
A610 Aniello Dienstleistungen

The name ‘Aniello’ was just a pseudonym for these entities. I suspect myself the term was used in the second sense. But no-one even asked whether these were companies or partnerships – they may have been municipal corporations – and yet juristische Personen was the answer selected (still, it only got 3 points out of the possible 4!).

However, I can’t help thinking Volkmar Hirantner’s suggestion of Mandanten was spot-on. Mandant is a term used in accounting – for instance, if your accounting software is mandantenfähig (multi-client-capable? multi-user-enabled?), you can use it for more than one of your clients.

This sort of thing is one of the reasons why we don’t rely on dictionaries.

Fürther Freiheit last Friday.

Under the heading Oh Gott in Frankreich, Ullrich Fichtner writes in Der Spiegel (my emphasis):

Ach, Frankreich! Im Land der kulinarischen Weltmeister ist Verfall im Verzug: Käsemacher geben auf, Bauernhöfe werden still gelegt, in den Supermärkten herrscht der Fertigfraß. Und wer hat Schuld an der Misere? Wir selbst, die Amerikaner und die “Desperate Housewives”.

(found on a mailing list)