I see my pagerank has returned to 6. It used to be 6 till I moved the site here in October 2007, then it went down to 4 and after a long time up to 5.
For more details of German law blogs, Henning Krieg’s kriegsrecht.de regularly reports with comparisons. I do better in Google than elsewhere.
Andis Kaulins’ blawg review for German-American Day, recently mentioned here, has now appeared.
There are a large number of links on matters German, some of them German and law, for example the German American Law Journal (note in its English version an entry on an article by Dr. Jessica Ohle on Recent Trends in German Employee Compensation. And let’s not forget the similarly-named German Law Journal, another excellent resource.
Scroll down (passing the non-German law links) for a large number of further transatlantic links.
Famous German-Americans are mentioned, although not including the three famous bankers from Franconia: Lehmann, Goldmann and Sachs.
Drei Banker von Weltruhm – alle drei waren sie Juden, die keine Perspektive mehr sahen in Unterfranken, Mitte des 19. Jahrhundert. Keine Zukunft, kaum Spielraum – die Gesetze für Juden waren hier sehr streng. Jüdische Bürger konnten sich nicht einfach niederlassen oder heiraten, wenn sie wollten. Sie durften keinen Beruf erlernen. Zahlen mussten sie aber – Steuern und Sonderabgaben für alles und nichts. Heinrich Lehmann, Marcus Goldmann, beide Söhne von Viehhändler, wollten so nicht leben.
German law blogs can take part on October 6, which is apparently German-American Day. This is a day when Americans put on their Lederhosen and pretend they are in Munich, I believe.
Any German blawgs that would like to be showcased and linked next Monday presumably have to have an entry written in English (?). They can submit this by Saturday October 4 but ideally even earlier.
Blawg Review explains itself on its site. I am probably not the person to explain it. It is a kind of blog carnival.
Here is an earlier Blawg Review, hosted on the New York Personal Injury Law Blog and based on the New York Marathon (with a link to the longest urinal in the world).
Here is the gen on Blawg Review for German American Day.
And here is the LawPundit blog where Blawg Review will appear, perhaps in a later time zone than CET.
The host of Blawg Review in this case is Andis Kaulins, an American lawyer who has taught American law, legal writing and legal research at Trier University and also translates. I imagine one has to hope that Andis will showcase one’s submission.
You will note that LawPundit blog offers Google automatic translation into German, thus:
Bavarian State Elections Point to Populist Turmoil in German Politics : Free Voters Coalition Comes out of Nowhere to Win 10% of the Bavarian Vote
Bayerische Staatsoper Wahlen Point-to-Populistische Turbulenzen in der deutschen Politik: Freie Wähler Koalition kommt aus dem Nichts zu Win 10% der bayerischen AbstimmungThe populist emergence of Sarah Palin of Alaska as the Vice-Presidential nominee of the Republican Party in America is not an isolated phenomenon of the USA.
Die populistische Auftreten von Sarah Palin von Alaska als Vize-Präsidentschafts-Kandidat der Republikanischen Partei in Amerika ist kein isoliertes Phänomen der USA.
I think I might take Gabriele Pauli over Sarah Palin.
The funny thing is, lots of German blogs appear in English, or a form thereof, but those are directed at readers outside Germany, whereas German law blogs tend to be in German – it makes sense to me!
But Blawg Review would be glad to have more German law blogs linked.
(Entry corrected after publication on account of a number of errors)
Some topics I mentioned earlier have been taken up elsewhere recently.
Uppercase ß: earlier entry
I was a bit early on this. The way for capital ß has now been opened (Tagesspiegel)
Düsseldorf/ Berlin – Die letzte Lücke im deutschen Alphabet ist geschlossen – zumindest technisch. Das ß gibt es nun auch als Großbuchstaben erstmals verankert in den internationalen Zeichensätzen ISO-10646 und Unicode 5.1. Es hat dort den Platz mit der Bezeichnung 1E9E. Das bestätigten das Deutsche Institut für Normung (DIN) und die Internationale Organisation für Normung (ISO). Die Änderung werde in Kürze veröffentlicht, sagte ein ISO-Sprecher. Damit hatte ein Antrag der DIN-Leute, eine Norm für das große ß zu schaffen, teilweise Erfolg.
As Cherry point out, it’s not so easy on the keyboard.
See also Bremer Sprachblog
LATER NOTE: see this justification for uppercase ß (quoted in comments; English)
I seem to have missed the Kantinenblogger, who posts photos of his canteen meals every day, mainly from Fürth, but also from Nuremberg, Munich and Auburn Hills (I assume the large proportion of sweetcorn kernels is a matter of choice).
(Discovered from print edition of Fürther Nachrichten)
Another site that has started is about the natural surroundings: www.natuerlich-fuerth.de
In the Stadtzeitung, the Oberbürgermeister reports on how many birds have been seen along the railway line: the black stork (Schwarzstorch), nightingale (Nachtigall), green-footed moorhens (Grünfüßige Teichhühner), the golden oriole (Pirol) and the curlew (Großer Brachvogel).
I wasn’t hopeful of seeing nightingales, a search for the black stork has failed so far – have seen a kingfisher though – I doubt the curlew will be strolling around close, but I was interested by the green-footed moorhen – until I realized that all moorhens are green-footed.
Here is a juvenile moorhen hiding its feet:
and here a muskrat (they must have heard there is no price on their heads at the moment):
Judge Alex Kozinski and Eugene Volokh on the use of Yiddish in court decisions:
Searching through the LEXIS legal opinions database reveals that “chutzpah” (sometimes also spelled “chutzpa,” “hutzpah,” or “hutzpa”) has appeared in 231 reported court decisions. Curiously, all but eleven of them have been filed since 1980. There are two possible explanations for this. One is that during the last 21 years there has been a dramatic increase in the actual amount of chutzpah in the United States–or at least in the U.S. legal system. This explanation seems possible, but unlikely.
The more likely explanation is that Yiddish is quickly supplanting Latin as the spice in American legal argot. As recently as 1970, a federal court not only felt the need to define “bagels”; it misdefined them, calling them “hard rolls shaped like doughnuts.” All right-thinking people know good bagels are rather soft. (Day-old bagels are rather hard, but right-thinking people do not eat day-olds, even when they are only 10 cents each.) We’ve come a long way since then.
Mind you, there’s no comparison with US language outside lawsuits.
This is a 1993 article, Lawsuit, Shmawsuit, available online.
(Via Ruth Morris, who writes on Interpreting in legal contexts and Interpreting in the Israel legal system – and has published on the same topic in England and Wales)