A Conference organized at the
Louisiana State University, Paul M. Hébert Law Center
By the Center of Civil Law Studies
Baton Rouge, April 10 and 11, 2014
– Call for Papers –
The Context:
In 2008, the Center of Civil Law Studies at the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hébert Law Center planned the vast project of translating the entire Louisiana Civil Code from English into French and Spanish. The French translation is well under way. Since 2011, between April and July, two or three interns from Université de Nantes, all students in a Master of Trilingual Studies program, are working every year at the CCLS on the translation project. Part of the translation work is available online, and some of it has been published in the Journal of Civil Law Studies.
In 2012, the translation project received significant financial support from the Partner University Foundation (PUF), with a grant funding a Training Multilingual Jurists project, combining the cooperative efforts of the LSU Law Center and the Université de Nantes, over a period of three years (2012-2015). This conference project is part of the Training Multilingual Jurists PUF Project.
The Topic:
Papers will discuss the Louisiana Civil Code translation project in the light of influences the code received, in different languages, from various jurisdictions, as well as what the code and the translation project bring to the Francophone and Hispanic legal world. Papers may visit one-way influences and cross-influences, in the perspective of codification and revision of existing codes, in the Americas and worldwide. Other code translation projects may be discussed, as well as the impact of multilingual codes on legal practice and the circulation of legal ideas.
The conference offers the occasion of discussing the present translation work and the Louisiana Civil Code in the light of its recent evolution. It will put the ongoing project in comparative and international perspective and will question its significance: in a world that communicates primarily in English, the development of a proper English legal terminology for the civil law offers an alternative to the common law vocabulary, all too often used by default in unification and harmonization efforts, in transnational business, and in academic work.
Call for papers:
Paper proposals must be sent together with an abstract and a CV or brief biography to Prof. Olivier Moréteau (moreteau@lsu.edu) by October 25, 2013. Decisions will be made and communicated to applicants no later than November 12, 2013. Due to limited funding, only a few proposals will be accepted.
Conference papers will be published in the Journal of Civil Law Studies.
