The Center for Civil Law Studies of the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center presents the 37th John H. Tucker, jr. Lecture in Civil Law:
“That Montreal Sound: The Influence of French Legal Ideas and the French Language on the Civil Law expressed in English”
Given by:
The Hon. Nicholas Kasirer (Cour d’appel du Québec)
Thursday, April 10, 2014 at 6:00 p.m.
Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center
McKernan Auditorium
Reception to follow
The Speaker:
The Honorable Nicholas Kasirer is a judge at the Court of Appeal of Quebec [http://www.tribunaux.qc.ca/c-appel/English/index.html], were he was appointed in 2009. He is a graduate of the McGill University Faculty of Law, where he served as an editor for the McGill Law Journal, and where he later served as a Professor (1989-2009) and Dean of the Faculty (2003-2009).
The topic:
The Civil Law in English has a distinctive sound, setting it apart lexically and conceptually from the vocabulary of the Common law. In jurisdictions connected to the French civilian tradition such as Quebec, this distinctiveness is in part the result of the imprint of French legal ideas and of the French language on legal parlance. The language of the law is also distinctive in other mixed jurisdictions – there appears to be a “New Orleans Sound” and an emerging “Eurobeat” for the Civil Law in English – where the influence of French as a matter of historical and social fact is felt differently. Drawing on insights taken from scholarship in comparative law, legal bilingualism and translation studies, the author seeks to evaluate the variable character of the phenomenon on the Civil Law in English within the French legal tradition.
