The Limitations of a Multilingual Legal System

• Published in: International journal for the semiotics of law = Revue internationale de sémiotique juridique Vol. 26; no. 4; pp. 861 - 882
• Main Author: McAuliffe, Karen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.12.2013
• Subjects: Applied Linguistics; Courts; European Union; Fundamentals of Law; International Law; Jurisprudence; Labor Process; Law; Law and Criminology; Legal History; Legal System; Linguistics; Negotiation; Philosophy of Law; Theories of Law; Law and language; Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU); Legal drafting; Multilingual law; Jurilinguistics; Legal translation; Translators; Cultural compromise; ECJ; EU law; Hybrid texts
• ISSN: 0952-8059; 1572-8722
• DOI: 10.1007/s11196-013-9314-0

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the way in which it works can be seen as a microcosm of how a multilingual, multicultural supranationalisation process and legal order can be constructed—the Court is a microcosm of the EU as a whole and in particular of EU law. The multilingual jurisprudence produced by the CJEU is necessarily shaped by the dynamics within that institution and by the ‘cultural compromises’ at play in the production process. The resultant texts, which make up that jurisprudence, are hybrid in nature and inherently approximate. On the one hand, that approximation can lead to discrepancies between language versions of the Court’s case law and thus jeopardise the uniform application of EU law. On the other hand, that approximation and hybridity define EU law as a distinct, supranational legal order. This paper analyses the operation of the CJEU and considers whether a linguistic cultural compromise exists within that institution which exercises a formative influence on the character of its ‘output’—i.e. its jurisprudence—and what that may mean for our understanding of the development of EU law.