Guide to Latin in international law / Aaron X. Fellmeth & Maurice Horwitz.

Guide to Latin in international law / Aaron X. Fellmeth & Maurice Horwitz.

Second edition.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2021.

1 online resource

"Maurice and I created this guidebook to assist international lawyers and law students seeking to master, or at least to decipher, the Latin recurrently injected into our profession's already arcane argot. It may seem strange that a reference book-sized niche remains in the twenty-first century given the profusion of legal reference works, but the fact remains that recognizing the need for a guidebook like this one is a little uncomfortable. The use of Latin in international legal writing is supposed to appear natural, if not inevitable. We typically pepper our writings with Latin as if the dead language were cayenne in a jambalaya-the more the better. Yet, at some level we are all aware that we often obscure rather than clarify our meaning when we use it instead of plain English. And when we get the Latin right, which we frequently do, and pronounce the words without butchering them beyond all hope of recognition, which we occasionally do, the practice nonetheless tends to baffle law students and even experienced international lawyers unschooled in the vernacular of Cicero. Aspiring international lawyers may wonder about the ubiquity of Latin in international legal discourse in the first place. It may seem that the esoterism of such a prevalent practice can only be intentional. The official explanation is that much early international law was developed by the Roman Empire, and the much admired Roman civil law has found its way by analogy into public international law wherever a lacuna or ambiguity in the principles of international law arose.1 When combined with the fact that Latin was the scholarly lingua franca of most of Europe during international law's early development, international lawyers have inherited an even better-stocked arsenal of Latin phrases and terms than other lawyers"-- Provided by publisher.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on June 01, 2022).

Print version: Fellmeth, Aaron Xavier. Guide to Latin in international law. Second edition. New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021]

English

9780197583135 electronic book
019758313X electronic book
9780197583111 electronic book
0197583113 electronic book
9780197583128 electronic book
0197583121 electronic book
9780197583104 hardcover

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