Law and language research group

• Karen McAuliffe’s work investigates the role of translation and translators in producing multilingual law
• Sophie Boyron is interested in the intersection of comparative law and translation and in particular on the impact that translation can have on the migration of constitutional concepts.

• Sean Coyle’s work investigates the ‘thinking behind’ specific word choices in sources on natural law (principally Francisco Suarez, Aquinas and Hugo Grotius)
• Karen McAuliffe is developing a theory of linguistic precedent based on concepts borrowed from linguistic theory
• Gavin Byrne’s research considers law and hermeneutics from an analytical philosophy of language perspective

• Karen McAuliffe’s work focuses on the relationship between law and language in the production of case law by the Court of Justice of the European Union.  She has also done work on the European Parliament and Commission and frequently presents her work at these institutions.

• Karen McAuliffe’s principal area of research focuses on the relationship between law, language and translation in the EU legal order.
• Anthony Arnull’s research interests in multilingual adjudication focus in particular on the Court of Justice of the European Union
• Aleksandra Cavoski’s research investigates the challenges of legal translation in EU accession states.  

• Chen Zhu’s research in intellectual property investigates the semiotic analysis of trade marks and brands

• Jack Grieve conducts research on authorship attribution and consults on casework as a forensic linguist

• Mairead Enright…

• Gavin Byrne’s work focuses on the writings of Theodor Adorno, the jargon of Nazism and the rise of the new right in contemporary law and politics

• Chen Zhu researches free and open source software licensing, the legal construction of authorship, digital humanities’ implications on copyright law as well as the semiotic analysis of trademarks and brands.

This project examines the production of the multilingual jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).  It is generally accepted that the development of a rule of law within the EU is due in a large part to the judicial pronouncements of that Court.  Based on the theoretical assumption that a linguistically ‘hybrid’ community, such as that of the ECJ, functions primarily through language interplays, negotiations and exchanges; and that the ‘process’ within any institution will necessarily affect its ‘output’, the development of an EU rule of law will necessarily be affected by the artificial and hybrid language of the ECJ.  The project is situated on the threshold between legal anthropology, linguistic theories and linguistic semiotics.  EU law, and in particular the jurisprudence of the ECJ, is coded in language, and the concepts that are used to construct that law are accessible only through language.  In this project, by clarifying the ways in which language plays a key role in determining judicial outcomes, I aim to challenge EU scholarship to look beyond more conventional approaches to the development of a rule of law which draw on law alone.

Details of the research and events taking place as part of this project can be found on the project website: llecj.karenmcauliffe.com

Follow the project on Twitter: @ERC_LLECJ

During the course of research on the ERC-funded ‘Law and Language at the European Court of Justice (ECJ)’ project, a gap in the resources currently available to analyse the case law of that court became apparent.  First, while many excellent multilingual databases relating to EU law exist, there is currently no resource that allows users of EU law easily and comprehensively to compare the meanings of legal terms across EU languages and member state legal systems.  Secondly, while the influence of the ECJ on national member state law is well-documented, influence also flows in the other direction: from member state to EU law level.  The special connection between ECJ and national courts allows legal terms and concepts to migrate in both directions but currently there is no resource which allows users of EU law to track the migration of such terms and concepts.

The EUCLCORP project will develop and test an innovative corpus, which will aim to address that gap by providing a resource that allows users of law to investigate in a systematic way:

• The history of the meaning(s) of a particular legal term
• In the case of an ambiguous term – the sense in which it is most frequently used
• The influence of national legal languages on EU case law (and vice versa)
• The impact of translation on the development of EU case law

The EUCLCORP project will run from July 2016 until December 2017.  The project brings together the fields of law and linguistics and will demonstrate the use of corpus linguistics research methods both in the field of legal scholarship and in practical terms in the legal arena.

EUCLCORP will be a standardized, multidimensional and multilingual corpus of the case law of the ECJ and of the constitutional/supreme courts of EU member states.  Unlike databases, in which users can carry out only relatively straightforward searches, for the occurrence of specific terms or keywords, corpora allow users to search and track how particular linguistic expressions and features are used in context.  The corpus will be coded linguistically and with metadata to enable stakeholders such as lawyers, legal translators, lexicographers and linguists, as well as academics to compare meanings of terms across languages and legal systems, to compare translation options and monitor the consistency of translation in EU case law.  Furthermore EUCLCORP will allow users to track the migration of terms between legal systems and to create data-driven legal dictionaries and terminological databases.  No such corpus currently exists.  By adding to the big data currently available in legal databases, EUCLCORP aims to contribute to a better understanding of EU law and of the Europeanisation of law as well as improved administration of justice.