There’s going to be a ruling today on whether whole-life sentences for murder are acceptable or whether the European Court of Human Rights should prevail.

It’s in poor taste, perhaps, that the capitalization in The Guardian was what caught my eye – Joshua Rozenberg’s article:

One of the most important sentencing cases in many years comes before the court of appeal on Friday. …

At a broader level, the court will have to decide whether to follow English law or human rights law as declared by the European court in Strasbourg. Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, will certainly be taking a close interest in the outcome. …

The lord chief justice is sitting, of course. On either side of Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd will be two judges who will have hoped they might now be occupying his chair: Sir Brian Leveson, president of the Queen’s bench division, and Lady Justice Hallett, vice-president of the court of appeal criminal division. Sitting with them will be Lord Justice Treacy, who succeeded Leveson as chairman of the sentencing council, and Mr Justice Burnett, a well-regarded public lawyer who was counsel to the Princess Diana inquest before he became a judge. …

It was because of a ruling of the European court of human rights delivered last July in a case called Vinter. The court’s grand chamber had found that “there must be both a prospect of release and a possibility of review” for a life sentence to be compatible with article 3 of the human rights convention, which bans “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. … the Council of Europe, which runs the human rights court. … Northampton crown court … the Human Rights Act, courts in the UK need only “take into account” Strasbourg rulings unless it is possible to interpret them in a way that is compatible with human rights.

Queen’s bench division? Why not queen’s bench division then? Human Rights Act but human rights convention?

I wonder what the Guardian Style Guide (style guide?) would tweet on this?

Guardian, Observer and guardian.co.uk style guide.

Telegraph style book on courts and crime.

The Economist Style Guide on capitals:

A balance has to be struck between so many capitals that the eyes dance and so few that the reader is diverted more by our style than by our substance. The general rule is to dignify with capital letters organisations and institutions, but not people. More exact rules are laid out below. Even these, however, leave some decisions to individual judgment. If in doubt use lower case unless it looks absurd. And remember that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

Qaddafi? Benedict? Schröder?

In 2010, in a post on the first German court hearing in English, I summarized what I could find out about the success of the initiative. The planned statutory change did not come about, presumably because the legislative period came to an end.

The same plan, however, is revived in a draft statute in Hamburg: Hamburg beschließt Gesetzesinitiative. Die Gerichtssprache ist … bald auch Englisch? in the German (!) legal magazine Legal Tribune.

The plan is to encourage more parties to use the Hamburg courts for international disputes. One reason for parties to litigate abroad or to use arbitration is allegedly the fact that cases in Germany are conducted in German. Chambers for international commercial matters, where the court language could be English, are to be established if the statute is passed.

Presumably the judges and all the court staff would have to have fluent English and be able to discuss German law in English.

It’s good that not all those involved are over-optimistic. One of the comments refers to an article by Wolfgang Bernet: Vom „Law made in Germany“ zur „Justice made in English“, commenting on the initiative. He points out the lack of empirical evidence that it is specifically the language of the court that frightens people off. At all events, the Hamburg courts already deal with documents in English, and if they have any doubts, they can consult a (specialist) dictionary – including online dictionaries such as LEO (sic).

Bernet thinks language may be the last reason why parties are put off.

Rechtswahl und Gerichtsstandsvereinbarungen sind Machtfragen: die geschicktere und einflussreichere Partei setzt sich in den Verhandlungen mit ihren Klauseln durch. Und da – so ist zu hören – wird selbst von Lieferanten und Herstellern mit Sitz in Deutschland das Heimatrecht keineswegs blind übernommen; erst recht mögen sich auswärtige Parteien in dieser Rolle nicht mit den käuferfreundlichen Bestimmungen des BGB und des CISG anfreunden, zudem deren Abbedingung über § 307 BGB auch im unternehmerischen Rechtsverkehr nur sehr eingeschränkt zugelassen wird. Und da man befürchten muss, dass die deutschen Gerichte, einmal angerufen, die Absichten der Vertragsparteien wohlmeinend durchkreuzen könnten und auch Rechtswahlklauseln kritisch gegenüber stehen, geht man diesem Risiko lieber aus dem Weg. Zur Steigerung der Attraktivität hier anzusetzen, könnte Erfolg versprechender sein, als bei unveränderter Rechtslage englisch zu verhandeln.

The question then arises as to how easy it is to express German legal concepts in English, particularly in oral reaction to unexpected arguments in court.

There was an example of this in the hearing reported on in my earlier entry: the court suddenly needed to use the term Grundurteil. The term was left in German and presumably defined. Romain defines this as judgment on the basis of the cause of action (reserving the amount to a later decision). It isn’t in Dietl. There’s a question about in LEO, but the link given is now dead. We had a discussion on a translators’ mailing list about this today and decided that interlocutory judgment (as used in the online ZPO translation) is misleading, because a Grundurteil is final as far as the merits of the case are concerned. But maybe the judges would consult the online translations of statutes. After all www.cgerli.org was presumably set up to help in this. I don’t know why German courts always love Dietl and not Romain: I use both.