Änderungen im Justizvergütungs- und entschädigungsgesetz JVEG, die am 22.12.2006 eingeführt wurden, werden rot markiert auf der Website des BDÜ Bayern – dank Corinna Schlüter-Ellner und Tatjana Otto (via private Nachricht an BDÜ-Bayern-Mitglieder).
David Crystal has a weblog: DCBlog, I discovered from Luxus Linguae.
It was at Broadcasting House in London, round about 1980. I was asked to talk about language to a managerial seminar series, and I started by asking them why there had been no blockbuster… etc. The answers went roughly along these lines. People remembered language work from their school days. It was dull, boring, dry as dust. Parsing. Split infinitives. Tenses. Being told off for mispronouncing something. Iambic pentameters. … I looked around the room. From their age, these were almost all people who had been through the prescriptive mill. They were probably the last generation of people to do so. They had never been enthused about language.
(On TV language blockbusters – not)
One of his reasons for blogging was one of mine – to save answering the same question many times. Not that that explains many of my posts.
This is a bit off topic, but is anyone au fait with the Leuze in Bad Cannstatt? For the second time I swam there on January 1, and I spent some time in the 20 degree outside pool with water from two springs. I didn’t write down the names of the five minerals there. It’s far too cold for me, but once you have swum nearly a length, the tingling in the water makes you feel warm all over, so you can keep swimming comfortably even though it’s actually cold. What’s more, the temperature keeps small children away. Lots of carbon but no chlorine.
There’s a detailed review online, but the reviewer didn’t try this particular pool because it was so cold. I haven’t yet found anything describing this effect.
High court judge, Wildy’s, December 2006.
More:
High Court judges’ dress depends on the division in which they sit, the type of case they are trying and the time of year. On Red Letter days – which include the Sovereign’s birthday, the State Opening of Parliament and some Saints’ days – all judges wear the scarlet robe for the appropriate season. A short wig is worn in all cases.
Queen’s Bench judges have five sets of robes. When trying civil cases in the winter, they wear a black robe faced with fur, a black scarf and girdle and a scarlet tippet. In summer, dress includes a violet robe faced with silk, a black scarf and girdle and a scarlet tippet. When dealing with criminal cases in the winter, judges wear the scarlet robe of the ceremonial dress but without the scarlet cloth and fur mantle. The costume also includes a black scarf and girdle and a scarlet casting-hood or tippet. For criminal business in the summer, a similar scarlet robe is worn but with silk rather than fur facings.
Chancery judges have one set of scarlet and ermine robes and one of black silk. Other items include a scarf, a mantle, a hood, Black Cap, a tippet, white gloves, knee breeches and steel buckled shoes – most of these only worn on ceremonial occasions. In the Chancery and Family divisions, judges wear a court coat and waistcoat with bands and a skirt or trousers beneath a black silk gown and a short wig. Court dress is not worn in chambers.
When sitting in the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, High Court judges wear a black silk gown and a short wig.
But what is he holding – surely not a gavel? But it doesn’t look like a black cap, either.
Although they’re often seen in cartoons and TV programmes and mentioned in almost everything else involving judges, the one place you won’t see a gavel is an English or Welsh courtroom – they are not used there.
I used to teach some of the vocabulary of case law in English: the hierarchy of the courts; the importance of the ratio decidendi (roughly speaking, the logic behind a decision, rather than the specific facts); the difference between Rechtskraft (res judicata: a particular decision is final and unappealable) and stare decisis (new decisions should follow older ones by certain courts if they are on similar fact situations), overruling and a decision on appeal; binding and persuasive precedents; obiter dicta; distinguishing, and the declaratory theory of the common law (the law does not change, it is merely described more precisely). If a case is not on all fours with a suggested precedent, the court will distinguish, which does not mean ‘see a difference’ but ‘find a difference’ (The court distinguished the present case from Carruthers v. Witherspoon).
While I was away, first the Volokh Conspiracy (here and here) and then Mark Liberman of Language Log wrote on the origin and meaning of the term on all fours.
I first met the term in The English Legal System by Walker & Walker (don’t be put off by the amazon.co.uk review):
Cases which are indistinguishable are described as being “on all fours” with one another.
I had never encountered the earlier version to run on all fours, but the OED and other references give it. I am most convinced by the Liberman argument that one situation is on all fours with another if the comparison does not limp (der Vergleich hinkt nicht). I did think that it meant that the various points all tallied, but that may be wrong. It probably has nothing to do with the idea of a multi-legged decision.
Good German introduction to this topic in Dieter Blumenwitz, Einführung in das anglo-amerikanische Recht.
(Link removed re malware, 2017)
I see Black’s Law Dictionary links to a ‘slang’ synonym, whitehorse case, also known as horse case, goose case, or gray mule case:
A reported case with facts virtually identical to those of the instant case, so that the disposition of the reported case should determine the outcome of the present case.
This doesn’t Google too well and may be purely Texan (Garner is from Texas, I believe).
