Pázmány Law Review

Editorial

Dorka Balogh — 2024-06-17

Linguistic Challenges of Interoperable Registers in the Context of E-Government Services

Petra Lea Láncos — 2024-06-17

E-administration requires, among others, interoperability between registers kept by authorities. Databases hold data clustered around concepts stemming from the different legal acts governing the procedures of the various authorities. Owing to the conceptual and terminological incoherence pervasive throughout legal acts, the intended interoperability between databases and registers will fail. This paper sheds light on the need for a conceptual consolidation in applicable national law on the example of registers kept by Hungarian authorities and the legislation governing them.

A Text Type-Specific Approach to Plain Legal Language and its Implications on Machine Translation

Dorka Balogh — 2024-06-17

Most characteristics of the legal language go against the idea of plain legal language. However, there are huge differences regarding the extent to which these characteristics are manifested in various legal text types. That said, the need for plain legal language usage is also subject to the type of the given text. The paper introduces some typical scenarios of legal communication by grouping legal genres into functional text type categories, as the function of the text, together with its recipients, determine whether the complexity of legal language may or may not be disregarded in a given legal text. But even when simplification seems justified, there are serious obstacles and risks in using plain legal language, some of which are also approached from the perspective of genres and text types. It is suggested in the paper that regarding written legal texts, syntactical and structural changes are a safe way to increase comprehensibility as opposed to lexical alterations.

Is Plain Legal Language Easy to Translate?

Anna Setkowicz-Ryszka — 2024-06-17

This article examines two machine translations of the same English contract (contract of supply) made using DeepL Pro in March 2022 and March 2023. The contract was used in my practice as a legal translator trainer. It proved easy to understand but difficult to translate into Polish, where plain legal language is much less developed than in English. The history of plain language in the UK, the US and Poland is briefly presented. The analysis of features of plain English covers: expressions from general language when mixed with legal or technical language, the pronoun you referring to one party to the contract, and other features, like active voice and short sentences. Additionally, renditions of expressions denoting obligation or permission are analysed separately as an important element of contracts. The conclusion is that pronoun you in this context constituted a major source of difficulty and was translated in many ways. The translations are also uneven in terms of register (formal legal language vs language of instructions) or forms of address (degree of politeness), which would make post-editing them demanding. Other problems that a post-editor would face include terminological inconsistency and increased number of nominalizations compared to source text. The active voice or length of sentences are unproblematic in MT. Both legal translators and MT providers should refer to existing plain Polish contracts for solutions.

On-line Interpreter Accreditation Tests for the Bodies and Institutions of the European Union

Márta Seresi — 2024-06-17

Multilingualism being one of the core values of the European Union, EU bodies and institutions rely heavily on the work of interpreters. To select the best candidates, the three biggest institutions organize a common accreditation test for the auxiliary conference interpreters they intend to work with. This paper aims to examine why such an accreditation test is needed by giving an overview of the necessary skills and competences of a professional conference interpreter and by explaining the sub-tasks to be completed during the examinations. Then it presents how new technologies were gradually integrated in the testing methods in an attempt to cut travel costs and to simplify the organization of the accreditation tests. Finally, the most recent, fully online testing procedure will be presented, with an analysis of the possible advantages and drawbacks of a remote exam setting, especially in the context of the lessons learnt about remote interpreting during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Legislative Text as a Legal Story: a Storytelling Approach to Contemporary Legislative Drafting

Anna Jopek-Bosiacka — 2024-06-17

A recent approach to legislative drafting, seen in common law jurisdictions which particularly praise plain and accessible legal communication, includes the presentation of legislative provisions to readers in a storytelling format. The legislative story develops progressively, by introducing legal characters, and describing relations, activities, and events. The paper draws on a number of drafting techniques, namely narrative-style drafting, the location of legal definitions in the structure of a legislative act, new types of legal definitions, the formal identification of terms and their signposting, as well as directness and personal tone. Based on various Commonwealth drafting directions, a legislative text is perceived and analyzed as a legal story written by lawyers and legislative drafters. This is in line with the discursive approaches of text linguists, such as De Beaugrande and Dressler, or van Dijk and Kintsch, who looked at the text as a process. Thus, text linguistics might be an adequate methodological framework to describe a legislative narrative. To successfully tell a legislative story, the identified elements of the storytelling approach are needed, such as a coherent conceptual framework, clear formal identification of terms, their adequate location in the structure of a legislative act, and more. The storytelling approach in common law legislation may be worth considering in continental (civil law) jurisdictions to improve the readability, accessibility, and clarity of laws.

Remote Interpreting in Criminal Proceedings

Balázs Szabolcs Gerencsér — 2024-06-17

Court interpreting is a form of community interpreting looking back at a long history. Indeed, the age of modern conference interpeting dates from the launch of simultaneous interpreting at the Nuremberg Trials following World War II. – Interpreting in court proceedings, in particular, in criminal law cases is indispensable for observing the right to a fair trial, enabling the defendant or applicants to understand the proceedings and make claims. Remote interpreting in court proceedings was employed predominantly in combination with remote hearings in the framework of legal aid procedures, however, with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, courts scrambled to continue operations in the uncertain times of lockdown. – This paper examines the fundamental rights backdrop (Article 6 ECHR and Article 47 Charter of Fundamental Rights) and legal basis of court interpreting in Europe (Directive 2010/64/EU) as the legal context of remote court interpreting. Is also examines the European (EU and CoE) policy papers and actions supporting remote hearing and remote interpreting in judicial procedures. It then continues with the case study on remote interpreting at the Hungarian criminal judicial system in the era of the Pandemic. Finally, in light of these findings, the following question is tackled: Does the accused have the same opportunity in the proceedings? In essence: does remote hearing and interpreting guarantee a fair trial?

(Legal) Language in Legaltech

Miklós Zorkóczy — 2024-06-17

Legal terminology empowers words and expressions with specific meanings. Legal language used by lawyers is just like another language, with special wording, jargon and there are special legal instruments behind of the terminology. Using technology in the legal domain is not coding the law, tech engineers and lawyers should cooperate to let LegalTech tools work in full capacity with their effectiveness. In this way lawyers can be backed by technology, and in return for this their clients will receive enhanced customer experience. Lawyers can’t be substituted, but the legal tasks can be speeded up, and costs can be decreased. Large Language Models and Blockchain technology will be the next generation of LegalTech tools, just lawyers need to be careful until the tech achievements will be accurate and accountable enough for the quality legal work. This chapter gives a detailed presentation of how current LegalTech tools can support legal tasks, and what are the risks of next generation of technology.

What Roman Law Teaches US: Modern Problems, Ancient Ideas. Pázmány Summer Law School 2023

Kacper Łądkowski — 2024-06-17

Leadership and Integrity: the Citadels for Constitutionalism in Kenya

Peter Kwenjera — 2024-06-17

Chapter 6 of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 provides for the modicum of constitutionalism that state officers ought to espouse in exercising public authority. Kenya has a robust legal and institutional framework that is mandated to implement the provisions of Chapter 6 of the 2010 Constitution in remedying historical accounts of corruption among state officials. This article appraises the strides made and the notable roadblocks faced since the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution. In doing so, it primarily employs a doctrinal research methodology analysis. It is argued that an obscured definition of leadership and integrity and insufficient institutional capacity have slowed down the implementation of Chapter 6. This article proposes minimum statutory penalties, a harmonised understanding of the standards of integrity to be attained and the security of tenure of offices such as special magistrates.

Vadimonium factum

János Erdődy — 2024-06-17