by Aaron Wolfe Kuperman
Library of Congress
Language Software Needed by Librarians
Originally this article was going to survey specialized or customizable tools available to law librarians needing additional foreign language skills. We probably have the greatest need of any academic profession to develop good language skills. Legal literature is almost exclusively in the language of the country rather than in English or one of the "major" scholarly languages. Most libraries have only a token number of specialists in foreign law, so we have to be polyglots (really "omniglots"). It is dubious to seek assistance from a colleague who knows the language but not its legalese. Unfortunately, no such tools exist.
There are many non-computerized tools (books, like we used in the good old days) that are designed to prepare American graduate students to pass what universities claim are examinations testing their ability to "read" a foreign langauge. Based on the LC database, none of these books focus on legal literature, and nothing is available except for the "major" western languages. The closest things to an exception are phrase books designed to facilitate communication about the American legal system with Spanish speakers.
There are a several sophisticated software packages making computer assisted instruction in foreign languages available on small personal computers. Unfortunately almost all are oriented to speaking, and none focus on legal materials. They are designed to enable you to order lunch or find a museum. We need a program that focuses on the language skills needed to sue the restaurant or find the courthouse, or at least comprehend legal research materials.
The program that comes the closest to our needs is probably "Transparent Langauge". It is inexpensive, readily available commercially, and very undemanding in its hardware requirements. It might be too hard for a beginner to use, but FCIL members aren't beginners at learning languages.
The core program is based on short texts, usually taken from popular literature or scholarly sources. Several sentences of text are displayed, and as the cursor highlights a word, elsewhere on the screen one sees the translation, as well as information on the word's grammatical form, place of the word within the phrase, and the phrase's relationship to the sentence and segment of the story. The company also markets a summary grammar program for each language, as well as materials that facilitate oral skills. The program is available for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Latin.
The bad news is that the program lacks features that law librarians would want. While some readings border legal topics, studying Kafka's stories or Cicero's orations is less useful to us then would be readings from the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch or Justinian.
It would be convenient if there were readily available materials to help law librarians overcome the monolingualism for which the United States is infamous. Until then, if a professor decides he needs to study Italian law, or a partner in the firm informs you that the newest client does a lot of business in Brazil, or the boss notices the backlog of Dutch law books (note I chose major Western languages for my examples, minor and non-Western languages are a bigger problem), all the librarian can do is to dig up a grammar outline, the few basic codes that have been translated, and a dictionary. Perhaps AALL should take a lead in addressing this problem by encouraging the development of materials designed to help law professionals improve foreign language skills.
Subject Headings for Courts
Through the cooperative cataloging program at the Library of Congress, a proposal was made for a topical subject heading for the Scottish "Sheriff's courts." These are courts of general original jurisdiction . Since each court is considered a distinct corporate body under AACR2, a collective corporate name heading such as "Scotland. Sheriff's Courts" is prohibited (unlike a single court that sits throughout the jurisdiction such as the English Crown Court). There used to be a valid corporate heading for "Scotland. Sheriff Courts," but under AACR2 descriptive catalogers developed an aversion to creating corporate headings for non-existent corporate bodies.
The subject proposal led to an examination of the headings for courts. LC uses the heading "District courts" for basic trial courts with a finite geographic responsibility. This is a non sequitur since all courts have a "district." Also, in some places (including Scotland), "district" courts are inferior court of limited jurisdiction. The subject heading "District courts" conveys no useful information.
The subject heading "Courts of first instance" has been used to indicate courts with limited jurisdiction (e.g. not hearing cases involving more than a certain amount, or only hearing minor criminal offenses). Their use is misleading since all courts that have original jurisdiction are courts of first instance. Another complication is that the subject heading "Circuit courts" has been frequently used for courts of diverse types that have "circuit" in the name, even if the judges of the court haven't had to ride circuit for centuries. Yet another problem is that no distinction is made between a heading for all courts (state and federal) as opposed to the federal courts only. There are also problems such as when a customary law court is evolving into a general trial court, or with courts of specialized but changing subject matter jurisdiction. The subject headings for courts are a mess.
What is needed is a generic heading for trial courts of unrestricted original jurisdiction. The name should be sufficiently generic that it can be used for 17th-century England, 20th-century Zimbabwe, or 22th-century Alpha Centauri. One solution would be a generic heading such as "Trial courts" and perhaps a variant such as "Federal trial courts" for countries that have separate federal and state systems. The headings as applied should be sufficient that information on courts of a given type in different jurisdictions or in different eras will be readily retrievable. If a user finds a book on a court, the headings should clarify what type of court it is.
Revising the subject heading for types of courts would require examining 11,000 bibliographic records and over 200 authority records. In addition, to be truly useful, someone would have to establish headings for each state with a note or cross reference from the distinct local name to the generic heading (e.g., "Sheriff's court, see Trial courts—Scotland"). It is unlikely that anyone at LC would have time to accomplish these changes, unless the rest of the law library world joined in.
New definition for KJE-KJC
An earlier column discussed some problems in classifying EU (or EC) legal materials. The problem is most obvious if the book in hand compares the laws of the members of the EU (or EC) on a subject that is unaffected by "Union" ("Community") law.
Under one approach the cataloger focuses on the whether the subject is governed by EU law. Another focuses on whether the book limits itself to the law of EU members, either explicitly or implicitly. The rule is becoming difficult to apply since all areas of law in member countries are increasingly affected by EU law. An exception that limited what went into KJE (for community law) is evolving rapidly into a rule that threatens to dump most of KJC (European law in general) into KJE.
A possible solution would be to define KJE as being for the law of the EU (EC), and that comparative law of member states would go to KJC. Whether the book discussed "Community" or "Union" would be irrelevant. Catalogers wouldn't be expected to understand what areas of law are governed by EU law. This would result in KJC standing to KJE in the exact relationship that the .Z95 cutter in the KF schedules (for comparative state law) stands to KF. This rule would work equally well if the EU remains a grouping of IGO's, or if it evolves into a federal jurisdiction. In many ways, it would reach the current result, but with an easier to apply methodology. The cataloger looks at the book, and if it is talking about national law as opposed to community law it goes to KJC.
An alternative subject heading treatment is to allow use of "European Union" in subfield z in 650 fields for works on the EU law, and to use "European Union countries" in a way similar to "United States—States" or "Canada—Provinces" for comparative works on the municipal laws of members. This would bring law practice into line with non-law practice, and allow us to make the critical distinction between EU law, law of EU countries, and law of Europe including non-EU countries.
This article is not an communication from the Library of Congress.
FORWARD to next article: What's New on INT-LAW.
BACK to Contents page.