Martina Bajčić

New Insights into the Semantics of Legal Concepts and the Legal Dictionary

This book focuses on legal concepts from the dual perspective of law and terminology. While legal concepts frame legal knowledge and take center stage in law, the discipline of terminology has traditionally been about concept description. Exploring topics common to both disciplines such as meaning, conceptualization and specialized knowledge transfer, the book gives a state-of-the-art account of legal interpretation, legal translation and legal lexicography with special emphasis on EU law. The special give-and-take of law and terminology is illuminated by real-life legal cases which demystify the ways courts do things with concepts. This original approach to the semantics of legal concepts is then incorporated into the making of a legal dictionary, thus filling a gap in the theory and practice of legal lexicography. With its rich repertoire of examples of legal terms in different languages, the book provides a blend of theory and practice, making it a valuable resource not only for scholars of law, language and lexicography but also for legal translators and students.

Conceptualization of Legal Terms in Different Fields of Law: The Need for a Transparent Terminological Approach

Conceptualization of Legal Terms in Different Fields of Law: The Need for a Transparent Terminological Approach Researchers often use subject-specific terminology in order to facilitate communication within a given field of law. Difficulties may arise when they must use scientific information that does not belong to their field. The transfer of information from one subject area to another is restricted by the technical vocabulary used in the particular field. If this is so, what happens when lawyers in one field of law use terms from another? Is the concept in question couched in the same term within another field of law as well? The process of conceptualizing one and the same legal term in different legal fields does not always proceed smoothly. As will be illustrated in this paper, the problem of conceptualizing legal terms in different fields of law calls for a transparent terminological approach. While it is true that legal concepts cannot be fully conveyed by terminology, a transparent terminological approach can contribute to the understanding of these concepts and facilitate their use in legal comparisons, thus making such an approach a conditio sine qua non of legal translation.

Coping with Vague EU Legal Concepts

The notion of vagueness can be explored from both the linguistic and legal perspective. In light of the fact that in law vagueness is often deemed to lead to legal indeterminacy, i.e., a situation where a legal question has no single answer, vagueness has been a topic of interest among legal scholars. Observed from a linguistic perspective on the other hand, vagueness is regarded as a linguistic phenomenon in relation to ambiguity and polysemy. In the case of legal concepts, this basic sense of “vague” takes on additional features, most notably imprecision and uncertainty, which are detrimental to the application and interpretation of the law. Putting the focus on the implications of vagueness for understanding and defining EU legal concepts, this chapter departs from the premise that linguistic theories, and in particular terminology, can provide a better understanding of legal concepts and their role in the field of law. Despite the fact that legal language strives for precision, legal concepts that occupy the central position in legal language insofar as they express legal norms are often indeterminate (This is not to say that all EU legal concepts can be considered vague and indeterminate; however, this chapter concentrates on the difficulty of defining such concepts). This indeterminacy can be attributed to the need to apply legal concepts to different real-life situations in order to regulate the changing social circumstances. This is the case with certain concepts of EU labor law, such as worker. The meaning of “worker” plays second fiddle to issues concerning labor law and the free movement of workers in the EU enshrined in Article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (hereinafter TFEU) (Consolidated Version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union 2008 O.J.C 115/47). As a cornerstone of Union citizenship, the freedom of movement of workers hinges on the meaning of “worker.” The recent economic and migrant crisis has once again put the spotlight on the importance of defining a worker and examining the benefits of having a worker status. Nevertheless, the latter concept is not explicitly defined in EU regulations. Instead, its meaning has been established by the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter CJEU) in its settled case law. On hand of examples this chapter illustrates how terminology studies contribute to a better understanding of such open-textured EU concepts and provide adequate tools for coping with their inherent vagueness.