The Evening Standard has an article on Where to eat and drink like a German in London (the days of Schmidt’s German restaurant have long gone – I didn’t realize Donald MacLean spent his last night there before going to the Soviet Union).

And also Ich bin ein Londoner: the Germans are coming – and a lot of them are already here

The echoes of historic Anglo-German entanglements ring oddly through this affinity. To put it bluntly, today’s London attracts a lot of people whose forebears were once part of a much less charming offensive. A current prominent member of the Germano-Londoner pack is Isabelle (Bella) Ribbentrop, head of corporate communication at Pictet and Cie, the private Swiss bank, who is married to a descendant of Hitler’s foreign minister.

…

English private education is one of the big draws — Germans have become the largest non-Asian group in Britain’s independent schools, not least because of the school uniforms. Another is doing things they can’t do at home, such as mowing the lawn outside approved hours or making a pile in hedge funds, which aren’t legal in Germany.

That’s a cheap knock about the uniform, and not correct either.

I love Denglish. For German expats in London:

With InterNations, German expats in London are able to find the help that they need as well as lots of valuable information. Our community supports you take advantage of your stay in The “Big Smoke”, as the city is caringly called.

Meanwhile, Konstantin has decided he’s staying.

I don’t seem to have a football tag (come on Dortmund).

Peter Urban ist ein schlechter Verlierer und hat heute Abend echt Sympathiepunkte eingebüßt. #esc2013 (tweeted by Hansjörg Schmidt)

The ESC is usually a time of soul-searching for Germany. This time, their song Glorious by Cascada (the singer Natalie Horler grewup in Germany but her parents are British) was early reputed to be a copy of last year’s winner Euphoria by Loreen.

You can compare them on this Independent page, at least if you aren’t in Germany, where Loreen’s video is replaced by the familiar Denglish message:

Unfortunately this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights.

We know that countries often vote for their neighbours, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word Nachbarn as often as I did from the German commentator on TV last night. Charlie Bavington rightly tweeted me asking if Germany has no neighbours.

Most bizarre of all was the theory that began to develop at the end that the reason Cascada got so few votes was possibly because of Merkel’s economic policies. As though Cascada needed any help!

See WAZ: Billige Ausrede für ESC-Debakel von Cascada? ARD-Mann gibt Merkel Schuld

Reuters picked it up later:

“There’s obviously a political situation to keep in mind – I don’t want to say ‘this was 18 points for Angela Merkel’,” said Germany’s ARD TV network coordinator Thomas Schreiber. “But we all have to be aware that it wasn’t just Cascada up there on stage (being judged) but all of Germany.”
…
“It’s unexplainable,” said ARD expert commentator Peter Urban on Sunday after Cascada singer Natalie Horler was 21st even though German media had touted her as a favorite. More than 8 million Germans watched, a 44 percent market share.

“Is it that people just don’t like us?” Urban was asked on ZDF TV. “There’s some truth to that,” he said.
“There will be two German soccer teams in the Champions League final next week and maybe people didn’t want Germany to win Eurovision too.”

Congratulations to German American Law Journal blog on ten years as a blog (and even longer as a pre-blog).

10 Jahre US-Recht auf Deutsch

This diagram shows which of the Supreme Court justices (AS = Antonin Scalia) got the most laughs in court in the 2004-2005 term. The information was published by Professor Jay D. Wexler in Green Bag as Laugh Track (PDF file). That term was the first time that the Court Reporter started revealing when the public had laughed.

The data revealed the following results :

“Justice Scalia won the competition by a landslide, instigating 77 laughing episodes, while Justice Thomas instigated zero laughing episodes, putting him all alone in last place among the Justices.”

Why am I not surprised?

Later, Jason Wojciechowski researched further in [Laughter.] on the Supreme Court: Expanding on Professor Wexler’s ‘Laugh Track’
(SSRN downloadable paper).

In view of the fact that Scalia speaks most, he wanted to check whether the figures were misleading. Scalia still came out top, but Thomas was not investigated because ‘He speaks so seldom as to make it pointless to examine his performance.’

Via Martin Gardiner in Improbable Research, with special thanks to Trevor in Barcelona.

This is a video explaining the work of the Supreme Court (embedded in a useful Guardian article). I quite like the graphics but am not sure about the woman introducing it, Stacey Dealey (?). That is a kind of estuary English (Lord Kerr speaks otherwise). She seems to swallow the T at the end of words but not in the middle position. It isn’t quite as fake as Jamie Oliver, though. And one of the judicial assistants has a Scottish accent.
One misses the red leather of the seats in the House of Lords, although I suppose the law lords sat in a committee room rather than in the house.

There’s an open day on Saturday May 25, which I gather is also Towel Day and German football day.

Suspect pleads not guilty in fatal beating trial write The Local, opening an interesting possibility in German criminal trials, where we wondered whether you were ever asked how you plead:

The suspected ringleader of a vicious beating that left 20-year-old Jonny K dead at Berlin’s central Alexanderplatz train station, pled not guilty on Monday as his trial began.

Google books shows a book called International Criminal Procedure: The Interface of Civil Law and Common Law, edited by Linda Carter and Fausto Pocar, which says:

Civil law systems also continue to favor confessions over guilty pleas. In contrast to guilty pleas, confessions are typically more detailed and do not entirely eliminate the trial process. Instead, courts receiving a confession are expected to continue the proceedings and review the evidence supporting the credibility of the confession. This is consistent with the traditional commitment of continental systems to uncovering the precise truth of the case.

Deutsche Welle does as well in Jonny K. murder trial begins in Berlin

The victim’s sister Tina K. will appear as a co-plaintiff.

(Actually, The Local uses co-plaintiff too). At least co-plaintiff is in the legal dictionaries, but I always wonder about plaintiff in a criminal trial. I used to call it private co-prosecutor, an invention of my own, when I was teaching. I have also recorded accessory prosecution for Nebenklage.

I found a Northern Ireland case where the term co-plaintiffs was used, but it referred to joint plaintiffs in a civil case. (In England and Wales, the term plaintiff has unfortunately been replaced by claimant).