BBC news has a nice outline of the functions of the Lord Chancellor, pros and cons of having one, and some history, under the heading Changes Explained / End of historic post.

The term chancellor goes back to the Latin and obviously is used in other languages too (Kanzler, Kanzlei). It’s also related to chancel, the eastern part of a church sometimes separated by screens or railings. The earliest OED etymological link is to Latin cancellarius, a court usher who sat ad cancellos or at the screen or lattice separating the judges from the public. This recalls the changes the word bar has gone through in legal English. Continue reading →

BBC news has a nice outline of the functions of the Lord Chancellor, pros and cons of having one, and some history, under the heading Changes Explained / End of historic post.

The term chancellor goes back to the Latin and obviously is used in other languages too (Kanzler, Kanzlei). It’s also related to chancel, the eastern part of a church sometimes separated by screens or railings. The earliest OED etymological link is to Latin cancellarius, a court usher who sat ad cancellos or at the screen or lattice separating the judges from the public. This recalls the changes the word bar has gone through in legal English. Continue reading →

Via Random Neural Misfirings: a New York Times article (free registration required) reports that Deloitte Consulting has developed a program that recognizes jargon in documents. It’s intended to help people write better business English. The program is called Bullfighter. It works like a spellchecker in word processing programs to spot words regarded as jargon. Continue reading →

Via Random Neural Misfirings: a New York Times article (free registration required) reports that Deloitte Consulting has developed a program that recognizes jargon in documents. It’s intended to help people write better business English. The program is called Bullfighter. It works like a spellchecker in word processing programs to spot words regarded as jargon. Continue reading →

Tom Watson, Labour MP, in his blog, points out what happens when the British energy company Powergen gets a URL for its Italian operations: www.powergenitalia.com.

Via advobLAWg, another German lawyer’s weblog (by Michael Heng), the Chamber of Industry and Commerce at Frankfurt has materials (in German) on the proposed reform of the law of unfair competition. What is particularly interesting is a PDF file containing a contrastive synopsis of old and draft new law, together with what is known as the ‘professors’ draft’. There is also an explanatory introduction to this. Continue reading →