Working with law and language at the two European Courts
European law without translation is like a car without wheels. Meet lawyer-linguists at the two European Courts.
The European Union has 24 official languages; this is a fact often highlighted and celebrated as something unique about EU law. A lesser-known fact is that the 24 language versions of EU legislation are all equally authoritative sources of EU law. This means that, when interpreting EU law, you cannot rely on one language version only, neither the version in your own language, nor the version in one of the major languages, e.g. English or French. It follows from the rules of interpretation of EU law that you must compare all language versions in order to ascertain the meaning of the text. The judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union are translated into all official languages; however, they are authoritative only in the language of the case, which can be any of the 24 official languages. To be certain, a legal interpreter must consult the authoritative language version of an EU judgment.
The language regime of the Council of Europe is different. The European Convention on Human Rights and the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights exist in only two official languages, English and French. However, with 46 member states (excluding Russia), many more languages are involved in the interpretation of the Convention and the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in the member states.
Consequently, European law depends on translation, and working with EU law and European Human Rights law is both a legal and a linguistic practice, even at national courts and within national legal authorities in Denmark.
At this seminar, you can meet representatives from both European courts who in their daily work translate legal judgments: two Danish lawyers who are employed as lawyer linguistics at the EU Court in Luxembourg and an English lawyer who is head of the English Division at the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg. They are invited to give students of law an opportunity to learn about their work and international careers at the two European courts.
The seminar is organized as a joint venture of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Faculty of Law, and the Centre of Internationalization and Parallel Language use at the Faculty of the Humanities, University of Copenhagen.
Programme
Working with law and language at the two European Courts (pdf)
Registration
Participation is free, but registration is required. Please use this registration form no later than 24 October 2022, 12:00.