Here in Germany there are Whitsun holidays. In Britain, there was a Late Spring Bank Holiday last week. For those who need reminding of the feast day, a very rapid animation of the events of Whitsun for Methodist youth (I was researching how to translate ‘das Pfingstgeschehen’ last week). I’m not sure if these pictures clarify anything.

On 25 February 2003, the House of Lords were discussing amendments to the Crime (International Cooperation) Bill. I happened on this by chance and it reminded me that I ought to spend more time searching Hansard for information on the drafting of statutes. Continue reading →

On 25 February 2003, the House of Lords were discussing amendments to the Crime (International Cooperation) Bill. I happened on this by chance and it reminded me that I ought to spend more time searching Hansard for information on the drafting of statutes. Continue reading →

In the last entry I quoted Lister/Veth’s entry on fortgesetzte Handlung:

continuous act /offence (UK) / offense (US); several acts or offences of the same nature viewed as a single act by the law

Adrian made a number of comments: that the term is in Köbler’s equally cheap dictionary; that (in Lister/Veth, I think he meant) it is given only as a criminal-law term and not in the form Fortsetzungshandlung; that a colleague was slammed by an Austrian-German law firm in London many years ago for using continuous offence, and that one possible translation would use the term nexus – I’ll quote the comment:

Eng. criminal law – or rather the Indictment Rules – talk of ‘(sequential) nexus of (serially) related offences’ for joint as opposed to separate or several indictment.
Name-dropping again, I would mention Sir Ivan Lawrence QC who developed the ‘nexus’ theory in the notorious 1960’s Kray Twins’ murder trial.

This raises a large number of points. In fact, I doubt I will ever achieve the brevity that is so often advised for weblogs. Continue reading →

In the last entry I quoted Lister/Veth’s entry on fortgesetzte Handlung:

continuous act /offence (UK) / offense (US); several acts or offences of the same nature viewed as a single act by the law

Adrian made a number of comments: that the term is in Köbler’s equally cheap dictionary; that (in Lister/Veth, I think he meant) it is given only as a criminal-law term and not in the form Fortsetzungshandlung; that a colleague was slammed by an Austrian-German law firm in London many years ago for using continuous offence, and that one possible translation would use the term nexus – I’ll quote the comment:

Eng. criminal law – or rather the Indictment Rules – talk of ‘(sequential) nexus of (serially) related offences’ for joint as opposed to separate or several indictment.
Name-dropping again, I would mention Sir Ivan Lawrence QC who developed the ‘nexus’ theory in the notorious 1960’s Kray Twins’ murder trial.

This raises a large number of points. In fact, I doubt I will ever achieve the brevity that is so often advised for weblogs. Continue reading →

This is a plug for Hueber Verlag’s Taschenwörterbuch Recht, by Ronald Lister and Klemens Veth, teachers of English and German as a foreign language respectively. Neither of them is a lawyer, but there is an Isolde Kübler involved:

bq. a lawyer with many years experience in English-speaking countries, who performed the textual correction and whose contribution to the translation of German legal concepts was definitive.

ISBN 3 19 116277 3 DE>EN and 3 19 006278 1 EN>DE, published in 2002. Continue reading →