Law and Language at the Court of Justice of the European Union

Law and Language at the Court of Justice of the European Union
Karen McAuliffe, University of Exeter

It is generally accepted that the development of a rule of law within the EU is due in a large part to the judicial pronouncements of its Court of Justice (CJEU).  However, the extensive literature on that Court remains predominantly focused on why it makes certain decisions and the effects of those decisions, but there has been very little research into how its multilingual jurisprudence is produced.  This paper, which is part of a larger ERC-funded project, considers the limitations of a multilingual legal system by analysing the process behind the production of the CJEU’s multilingual jurisprudence.  That jurisprudence is necessarily shaped by the dynamics within the institution and by the ‘cultural compromises’ at play in the production process.  The resultant texts 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 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.  In order to fully understand the continuously developing international and supranational legal orders of today’s world, we need to rethink the boundaries between seemingly disparate fields of research – such as semiotics, translation and linguistic theories, and their interaction with law – and understand how they in fact overlap and interlock to contribute to the development of such legal orders.

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