Lawsuit, Shmawsuit/Yiddisch
Judge Alex Kozinski and Eugene Volokh on the use of Yiddish in court decisions: Searching through the LEXIS legal opinions database reveals that “chutzpah” (sometimes also spelled “chutzpa,” “hutzpah,”...
View ArticleI was proceeding in a northerly direction/Polizeisprech
In an article headed Cops Talk Funny, Val Van Brocklin points out some of the curious turns of phrase used by U.S. police in court. British police do this too, though not always using the same terms. #...
View ArticleThe Lost German Slave Girl/Eine Deutsche als Sklavin in Louisiana?
Here is yet another gratuitous book report. The Lost German Slave Girl. The Extraordinary True Story of Sally Miller and Her Fight for Freedom in Old New Orleans, by John Bailey, Atlantic Monthly Press...
View ArticleJohn Flood: What Do Lawyers Do?
John Flood has published a revised version of his book on a Chicago law firm, called Tischmann and Weinstock for the purposes of the book: What Do Lawyers Do? An ethnography of a corporate law firm....
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Tauben vergiften im Park/Poisoning pigeons in the park
I do prefer Kreisler’s version to Tom Lehrer’s, and it seems to say something about the Viennese nature – but the two have more in common than I thought: the two texts are shown side by side here.
View ArticleAre blogs any use to law firms (translators)?
Are blogs any use to law firms? – article by Joe Reevy in the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers at Infolaw. The newsletter is accessible free of charge online nowadays. The general point made is that law...
View ArticleStudents’ errors (ancient): British and US background studies
Students’ replies in a short oral test on British and US background studies in the 1980s and 1990s. I only tested the UK part. The students were at a Berufsfachschule, a kind of secretarial college,...
View ArticleThe German media on the US legal system
Andrew Hammel has a suspicion that the German media are keen to find fault with what they believe to be the US justice system, while overlooking comparable shortcomings of the German justice system....
View ArticleSharon Byrd
I was sorry to hear that Sharon Byrd died last year – in March 2014 in fact. She was only a couple of weeks younger than me. I completely missed it but I hadn’t been in touch for years. I copy below...
View ArticleThe Bluebook and copyright
In ‘Bluebook’ Critics Incite Copyright Clash , The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports that some ‘legal activists’ are planning to post online what they call a simpler, free alternative. This may or...
View ArticleLAWnLinguistics blog on corpus linguistics
I have already given a link to Neil Goldfarb’s weblog LAWnLinguistics – Not about the linguistics of lawns, but that was only in passing. My post then was about Goldfarb’s use of corpus linguistics in...
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Amerikaner/black and white cookies
I always thought Amerikaner were a German thing and wondered where they got their name from, but it turns out they are a New York cookie (via smitten kitchen). (Image by Ben Orwoll, public domain)...
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