The Times Online law section (registration should be free of charge) reported on October 28th that New Zealand will no longer be using the Privy Council as its final court of appeal.

bq. The decision, which follows similar steps over the past 50 years by Australia, Canada and South Africa, ends 163 years of legal dependence on New Zealand’s former colonial masters. A supreme court of five judges will become the final court of appeal from July 1 next year.

The full name of the court is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Rechtsausschuss des Kronrats). Its members are the judges of the House of Lords plus one or two Commonwealth judges. Only 15 countries will still be sending appeals to it, most of them Caribbean countries with death-penalty cases (curious that the House of Lords have to deal with death-penalty cases when the death penalty has been abolished in Britain, and with questions relating to a written constitution when, despite the Human Rights Act, Britain doesn’t have anything quite like that).

The article goes into some detail about death penalty cases in the Caribbean.

Those with spelling problems should note: a member of the Privy Council is a Privy Counsellor (not Councillor).

If this is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, what is the Privy Council? In the Middle Ages it was a group of people who advised the King. Now, it is more amorphous. People are made members of the Privy Council for life, and they are addressed as ‘Right Honourable’. But only if they are ministers in the government do they actually decide anything. There are about 500 members. They only ever meet in full when the monard dies or announces an intention to marry. The Privy Council passes some delegated legislation, called Orders in Council (Dietl says (Regierungs-)Verordnung).

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian archives by Roy Hattersley, who became a member. (He gives a list of some of the well-known members – a full list is here).

bq. Harold Wilson once assured Richard Nixon that, because he was addressing ministers who had taken the privy council oath, he could speak freely about nuclear strategy. No doubt the secrets of the Pentagon remained secure. But I doubt if it was the promise “not (to) know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty’s person, honour, crown, or dignity royal” which prevented the president’s audience from running out of Downing Street to phone the Soviet embassy.

bq. Quoting those words from the privy council’s oath is certainly an offence and possibly treason. Members are required to “keep secret all matters committed and revealed unto you or that shall be treated secretly in council”. So I should not describe the Gilbertian meeting at which I promised to “defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences and authorities granted to Her Majesty”.

LAWgical reported yesterday on an article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung saying that the Bayerisches Oberstes Landesgericht may be abolished as part of the money-saving package announced yesterday by Edmund Stoiber.

Stoiber wants to remove one whole tier of police and schools administration too.

The Bayerisches Oberstes Landesgericht is a unique institution. The Einführungsgesetz zum Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz (Introductory Act to the Act on the Constitution of the Courts (or to the Judicature Act)) provides that in Länder with more than one Oberlandesgericht, the hearing of and decision in appeals on a point of law that would normally go to the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) can be dealt with by an oberstes Landesgericht (highest regional court?).

The website has a lot of very nice photos, of president, public prosecutors, and visitors from China and Ukraine.

Translators have long wondered how to translate the BayObLG – Higher Bavarian Court? Highest Bavarian Court of Appeal? They may still wonder, because even if the court is abolished, its name will haunt translations for years to come.

Axel H. Horns has a weblog, in English, on patent law. He’s a patent agent / patent attorney / Patentanwalt in Munich. Via Bag & Baggage.
Incidentally, instead of writing Impressum, he uses ‘Disclaimer / About this website (Pflichtangaben gemäss TDG)’.

Bettina, of Nicht-alle-Tage-Buch, writes that a Wiki, the Translator Help Wiki, has been started by the TW_Users mailing list. TW deals with Trados Workbench and other translation memory software (but not with Transit). However, the Wiki seems wider than that, although not much has appeared there yet.

For many readers in Germany, who may be wondering what a Wiki is: it’s a collection of knowledge made by a group of people. There are many Wikis on the Internet. One person starts with an outline page, and words are marked to show that the next person who comes along can add to them by starting a new page. I’ve occasionally thought of starting a Wiki here, but I don’t know how many people would join in.

I’ve mentioned JuraWiki before now. That is a German law wiki. There is an English-language wiki called Wikipedia (link not working at the moment) with a German section.

There happens to be a link to ‘What is a wiki?’ in Handakte WebLAWg today.

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.