A Normative Approach to the Quistclose Trust

This is the first article to undertake a sustained analysis of normative justifications for the Quistclose trust. Whilst much of the existing writing on this topic has focused on the better classification of such trusts – for instance, whether they are express, resulting, constructive or sui generis – this article asks why the law should recognise a trust in addition to any underlying legal relationship. Four key justifications are addressed, based on respecting party intention, unconscionability, fairness, and the incentivisation of desirable transactions. It will be argued that: (i) there are difficulties with each of these justifications, although an intention‐focused explanation is probably the most convincing; and (ii) the existing law and commentary lacks coherence and consistency, as seen in the mismatch between normative and doctrinal analysis, and the failure to properly address the ramifications of the Quistclose trust during insolvency.     

A Bilingual,Bicultural Approach to Detachment and Appraisal in the Law: Tracing Impersonality and Interaction in English and Spanish Legal Op-Eds

The present research study carries out a contrastive analysis between two corpora of legal opinion columns as special types of genres, with a view to assess their opposing patterns of impersonality—authorial detachment—and attitude—emotion, judgment, appreciation, taking as a point of departure appraisal theory, or the interpretation of Halliday's Systemic-Functional Linguistics (1994/2004) by the so-called Sydney School. The long-established perspective is that legal genres are highly impersonal; authoritative instruments representing an intentional exercise of elitist and exclusionary practices. However, the hypothesis embedded in the present study is that some texts, such as news editorials and op-eds, constitute hybrid genres where the writer makes use of all kinds of inducement devices to support his/her theses with effectiveness and credibility (Dafouz in J Pragmat 40:95-113, 2008), nonetheless retaining one of the basic traits of monogloss legal discourse: impersonality. However, it is hypothesized that this hybridity is to take place in different degrees, in tune with the influence exerted by legal system that constitutes the background of each corpus. To prove such a point, 40 legal op-eds—roughly, a thirty-five-thousand-word corpus in English and Spanish overall—were scrutinized, having been extracted from the specialized legal sections of two national newspapers of undisputed prestige as opinion-formation media. Through a contrastive study, the purpose of the present work was set to describe, explain and assess how lexicogrammar devices unveil interesting differences between the expression of impersonality and attitude in legal opinion columns as genres in either language, hence reflecting different ways in which the law is envisioned in each of the particular legal systems they belong to.     

The Syntactic Features of Islamic Legal Texts and Their Syntactic Implications for Translation

Certain religious texts are deemed part of legal texts that are characterised by high sensitivity and sacredness. Amongst such religious texts are Islamic legal texts that are replete with Islamic legal terms that designate particular legal concepts peculiar to Islamic legal system and legal culture. However, from the syntactic perspective, Islamic legal texts prove lengthy and condensed, with an extensive use of coordinated, subordinate and relative clauses, which separate the main verb from the subject, and which, of course, carry a heavy load of legal detail. The present paper seeks to examine the syntactic features of Islamic legal texts and the syntactic translation implications involved through studying three Islamic legal Arabic excerpts and their English translations. The paper argues that amongst the syntactic features of Islamic legal texts are nominalisation, participles, modals and complex structures. It also claims that the syntactic translation implications are indeed syntactic features of legal English, which are sentence combining versus sentence break, nominalisation, wh-deletion, passivisation, modals and multiple negations. Moreover, nominalisation, modality and complex structures are features of both Islamic legal texts and legal English, albeit with varying degrees.

     

法律英语汉译中的障碍及对策——从工具书的角度

学者云,“翻译之事,定名最难”;而古人也有教诲说,“公欲善其事,必先利其器”,故工具书中术语的准确定位事关翻译意旨的顺利实现;故针对法律英语词典的误译、涵盖面不广、未对近义词进行辨析以及大量非词汇化词条等问题,词典编辑者应尽其所能对工具书予以完善,以排除法律英语翻译时因工具书而造成的障碍。     

A Legal Conventionalist Approach to Pollution

There are no moral entitlements with respect to pollution prior to legal conventions that establish them, or so I will argue. While some moral entitlements precede legal conventions, pollution is part of a category of harms against interests that stands apart in this regard. More specifically, pollution is a problematic type of harm that creates liability only under certain conditions. Human interactions lead to harm and to the invasion of others’ space regularly, and therefore we need an account of undue harm as a basis of assigning legal protections (rights) and obligations (duties) to different agents, which creates standards for holding those agents responsible for harm. Absent such positive standards with respect to pollution at the domestic or international level, it does not make sense to hold agents responsible. This fact has two fundamental implications. First, contrary to what some defenders of environmental justice argue, we cannot hold people responsible for polluting without a system of legal rights in place that assigns entitlements, protections, and obligations, and second, contrary to what opponents of environmental regulation claim, the lack of moral entitlements to pollute creates room for quite extensive legal restrictions on people’s ability to pollute for the sake of the environment and human health. Indeed the scope of those restrictions is wide and open-ended.     

Legal Reality: A Naturalist Approach to Legal Ontology

Law and Philosophy -     

多元翻译理论初探

本文在比较中西典型译论的基础上指出,翻译的本质是涉及诸多要素的交流活动,而这些译论仅侧重反映了其中的某些方面,因此,提倡通过“对话”,吸收其合理内核,使其共存,从而建立一种多元对话的翻译理论新体系非常必要。     

文化差异对法律及经贸英语翻译的影响

人类的翻译活动受诸多因素的影响,其中包括文化差异。本文作者从英汉翻译实践出发,列举了大量论据,证明中国文化与西方文化之间的差异对法律及经贸英语翻译具有重大影响,值得人们认真研究和对待。     

地方性法规文本质量研究——以重庆市160件法规文本评估为基础

2007年6-12月,重庆市社科规划项目《地方人大立法后评估制度研究》课题组从立法必要性、地方特色、法制统一、权力配置、技术规范五个方面,对重庆市当时有效的160件地方性法规文本进行量化评估,平均得分83.09,得90分以上的法规有9件,70分以下的4件,60分以下为零。五项质量要素中,地方特色所得比例最高,技术规范次之,立法必要性居第三,权力配置为第四,法制统一排在末位。在一定程度上说明,重庆市地方性法规文本所反映的地方特色比较鲜明,讲究立法技术,但在突出地方特色和注重地方立法创新中还须更加注意法制统一,科学地处理好权利与权力的关系,严格防止部门权力的立法扩张。     

法律英语语境中的多义性普通词语汉译

法律英语中的许多法律术语来源于多义性普通词语。法律语境不但制约多义性普通词语的语义,还可以排除其歧义,制约其句子。多义性普通词语因受语境的影响而导致准确翻译存在很多困难。在法律语境下,要准确翻译多义性普通词语,得熟悉专业知识,做到忠于原文与语境,熟知多义性普通词语在法律专业中的意义。逻辑思维和注释在翻译中也能起到适当的作用。     

Translation and Legal Terminology: Techniques for Coping with the Untranslatability of Legal Terms between Arabic and English

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - The issue of untranslatability of legal terms, particularly between originally unrelated...     

Testing the Precision of Legal Translation: The Case of Translating Islamic Legal Terms into English

Legal translation is viewed as “a category in its own right” (Weston in An English reader’s guide to the French legal system. Berg, Oxford, (1991, p. 2). It is a kind of translation of the language used for specific purposes (Zhao in J Transl Stud 4:28, 2000). Legal translation requires accuracy in relaying the substance of the message, while respecting the form thereof as well as the genius of the target language (Zhao in J Transl Stud 4:19, 2000; Sarcevic in New approach to legal translation. Kluwer Law International, Hague, 1997, p. 52). As generally accepted worldwide, precision is deemed of paramount importance in legal translation. With this in mind, the present paper deals chiefly with the concept of how legal translation can correctly be tested in order to ensure precision and validity for application and implementation. The paper will argue that the main goal of legal translation and the major criterion against which the precision of legal translation should be tested is to reproduce the same legal effect in the target text as that conveyed in the source text regardless of the method(s) used in the translation process.     

处罚法定视野下失信惩戒的规范进路

在新《行政处罚法》增设行政处罚定义条款的背景下,大部分失信惩戒措施都可以纳入行政处罚范畴。处罚法定原则是规范行政处罚的关键技术,现行失信惩戒制度在要件、效果、程序等维度上皆不同程度偏离了处罚法定原则,亟需纠偏。在要件法定层面,应对失信概念进行类型化提炼、拼接失信构成要件的规范分离,并增设主观过错要素;在效果法定层面,失信惩戒的设定应恪守法律保留、建立失信行为与惩戒措施的匹配规则,并在"一事不再罚"框架内实施惩戒;在程序法定层面,信息归集程序应符合《民法典》《个人信息保护法》设定的信息处理规则,处罚决定程序须在自动化处理和人工介入之间求得平衡并合理限定追究时效,信用修复程序则应完善修复条件,以及引入"信息修复"制度。     

Legal Positivism, Law's Normativity, and the Normative Force of Legal Justification

In this article, I distinguish between a moral and a strictly legal conception of legal normativity, and argue that legal positivists can account for law's normativity in the strictly legal but not in the moral sense, while pointing out that normativity in the former sense is of little interest, at least to lawyers. I add, however, that while the moral conception of law's normativity is to be preferred to the strictly legal conception from the rather narrow viewpoint of the study of law's normativity, it is less attractive than the latter from the broader viewpoint of the study of the nature of law. I then distinguish between a moral and a strictly legal conception of the normative force of legal justification, and argue that legal positivists may without contradiction embrace the moral conception, and that therefore the analysis of the normative force of legal justification need not be a problem for legal positivists. I conclude that, on the whole, we have reason to prefer legal positivism to natural law theory. I begin by introducing the subject of jurisprudence (section 1). I then introduce the natural law/legal positivism debate, suggesting that we ought to understand it as a debate about the proper way to explicate the concept of law (section 2). I proceed to argue that legal decision-making is a matter of applying legal norms to facts, and that syllogistic reasoning plays a prominent role in legal decision-making thus conceived (section 3). Having done that, I discuss law's normativity (section 4), the normative force of legal justification (section 5), and the relation between the former and the latter (section 6). I conclude with a critical comment on Joseph Raz' understanding of the question of law's normativity (appendix).     

法制现代化问题的规范性

法制现代化问题为人们关注日久。在这一问题的规范性维度,即所谓法制现代化的进步性和普世性论题上,至今争议频仍。主流社会理论与后现代主义、文化多元主义各据一方,后二者依据极端相对主义的形上观点力图抵制法制现代化论题的规范性维度之扩张。通过检视争论各方的若干思想谱系和理据,粗略解析共通的理论争点:即人性论预设之后,依人性的同等和平等这一形式化理念为考量基准,在当今世界多元文化的总体趋势下,法制现代化问题的规范性要求是可以证成的。     

A Jurilinguistic Approach in Legal Education

The purpose of this essay is to advocate for including jurilinguistics in legal education. It presents jurilinguistics as a tool for understanding law and therefore supports continuing efforts to teach it. Knowing it is not unique, this essay proposes a jurilinguistic approach that focuses on the in-between of legal translation and comparative law. The proposal outlines the importance of educating in the capabilities of teaching a particular subject in a language other than their official one. The idea is to let the Other help to understand the Self. Particularly pertinent in transnational law programs, it is a multicultural approach that not only recognizes the other, but also embraces it.     

法律法规名称英译研究

法律法规的名称往往揭示了法律法规所要调整或规范的对象、主要范围或主要内容,故而至关重要,但目前鲜有学者对我国法律法规名称的英译进行探讨。在权威机构颁布的法律法规英译本中,法律法规名称的翻译在术语、语法及句法等方面都存在诸多值得商榷之处。中西方思维、文化及心理上的巨大差异导致了中英文表述上的不同。从翻译目的论的视角观之,法律法规名称的英译需正确选用术语、注重译入语的语法和句法表述习惯,尤其是参照外国法律法规名称的表达方式,方能最终实现我国法律法规英译的目的。     

规范性文件制定过程中的法律风险及其防范

规范性文件制定主体在制定规范性文件时面临因操作不规范、制定内容不合理或者有其他不符合法律规定情形的法律风险。因此。规范性文件制定过程中存在因法律风险而带来的责任承担问题。要防范规范性文件制定中的法律风险,必须具备制定主体适格、内容合法合理、程序正当等基本要件。     

论法律解释在法律文本翻译中的运用

随着中外法律文化交流的日益频繁,世界各国的法律文本不断地被翻译成中文,大量中文法律文本也被不断地翻译成其他国家的语言文本。由此,法律文本翻译的失真问题成为中外法律文化交流不畅的主要原因之一。在当前法律翻译理论研究中,学者们更多地关注于语言学理论和翻译学理论的研究,少有人关注法律解释学理论在法律翻译中的指导作用。虽然法律翻译有其自身的特性,但法律解释与法律翻译之间具有共同的渊源。法律解释理论对于译者在翻译法律文本中正确理解原文本意大有裨益,将法律解释学的文义解释、目的解释、历史解释、系统解释等方法运用于法律文本翻译中,有助于化解法律翻译失真问题。