Translating "law" to other European languages

The translation of "law" to other European languages faces several difficulties. In most European languages, as well as some others influenced by European languages, there are two different words that can be translated to English as "law". For the general comparison in this article the latin terms "ius" and "lex" will be used. According to Wiktionary "lex" can be defined as a rule issued by a political authority, such as the Parliament or the Government, while "ius" refers to whatever rules and standards the courts ought to apply. Etymologically, "ius" has some relation to "right", "just" or "straight".

General

There are in English two more or less synonymous adjectives, both from Latin origin, that correspond etymologically to the Continental distinction: the common word "legal" and the less common "jural" (or even "juristic"). However, the words "ius" and "lex" are not synonyms.

"Lex" can sometimes be translated as "legislation", "statute", "statutory law" or even "act", even if the corresponding "legislatio", "statutus" and "actus" also exist. "Lex" is law made by a political authority, such as the Parliament or the Government. In modern societies, "leges" are usually written, though this is not a necessary feature. "Lex" is often used in the plural ("leges"), since each act is one "lex".

On the other hand, "ius" is also polysemous, since it can mean either "law" or "right". Continental legal scholars sometimes make a distinction between "subjective "ius" (any legal right) and "objective "ius" (the whole law), but this does not happen in ordinary language. The two senses of "ius" can be easily distinguished in most cases.

When "ius" means "law", it usually has some semantic connection to "what is right", "just" or "straight". For instance, the German motto "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit" (literally "Unity and law and freedom")) has been translated as "Unity and justice and freedom", even though there is a different word for "justice" ("Gerechtigkeit"). "Lex" does not have such a connection. Some translators of Kant's and Hegel's works have translated "Recht" as "objective right" (see Steiner, 2002, p. 276), although those works, especially Kant's, are just about law.

Present day continental law schools and faculties claim to study "ius". Mediaeval universities, on the contrary, usually had a faculty of "leges". English Wikipedia's article on "law" links to other languages Wikipedias' articles on the equivalent to "ius".

Examples

There are a few European languages other than English where "law" translates into one word, such as Polish "prawo". On the other side, a prominent non-European language which makes the distinction is Arabic, where قانون ("qānūn") is equivalent to "lex" and ﺣـق ("ḥaqq") is equivalent to "ius".

To clarify the difference one may look at how these phrases translate into Spanish:

This difference between English and other European languages is sometimes invoked in the debates between legal positivism, natural law and interpretivism. Berkowitz (2005) argues that the rise of legal positivism corresponds to a "transformation of the sense of 'law', a difficult topic made more so by a particular limitation of the English language", the non-distinction between "ius" and "lex". Hart himself, in "The concept of law" (pp. 206 ff.), argued that the distinction between "ius" and "lex" might clarify the relation between law and morality. A similar point is made by Gardner (2004) in order to distinguish between "law" in general and "legal law".

For the sake of examples, this article uses the Latin words.

The discussion on the relation between "ius" and "lex"

Continental legal positivists of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century claimed that all "ius" is "lex".

References and further reading

*Émile Benveniste (1969) "Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes", vol. 2, "Pouvoir, droit, religion", Paris: Minuit.
*Berkowitz, Roger (2005) "The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition", Harvard University Press. An [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/pdf/BERGIF_excerpt.pdf excerpt] is available online.
*Fletcher, George (2001) [http://www.iusetlex.pl/pdf/fletcher.pdf "In honour of 'Ius et Lex'. Some thoughts on speaking about law".]
*Gardner, John (2004), "The legality of law", Ratio Juris, vol. 17, no. 2, June 2004, 168-181.
*Hans Kelsen (1960) "Pure Theory of Law", second edition.
*Hillel Steiner (2002), "Working Rights", in Kramer, Simmonds, Steiner, "A debate over rights", Oxford: Oxford University.