French the most legal language, say the French

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/9/2007 01:55 PM, Dennis Baron wrote:
>French the most legal language, say the French
>
>Because of its precision, the French language is safest to use for
>the European Union’s legal business, says French writer and former
>permanent secretary of the Académie Française Maurice Druon.  ... EU
>rules presently stipulate that the language controlling the
>interpretation of any given law is the one in which it was originally
>written.  But the EU has 28 official languages (Irish, the most
>recent, was added only last month).  Druon’s answer to this Tower of
>Babel: use French to resolve legal disputes ­ after all, it’s related
>to Latin and it’s the language of the Napoleonic Code.  .... But
>following that sort of logic, the EU’s legal language should be
>Italian ­ it’s closer to Latin than French is ­ or maybe even
>English.  After all, the American Constitution predates the Code
>Napoléon by a good fifteen years, and Britain was governed by a
>Parliament long before France started chopping off the heads of
>monarchs. ....  Druon acknowledges that other languages are useful in
>their own limited ways: “The Italian language is the language of
>song, German is good for philosophy and English for poetry.”  But,
>Druon insists, “French is best at precision, it has a rigor to it.
>It is the safest language for legal purposes.”
>...

Why am I reminded of "Hell is a German policeman,
an English cook, a French mechanic, a Swiss lover
[etc.]"?  (That's all I can see retrieve from
teenforums.student.com without joining.)

And does the law of the EU follow the Napoleonic
code, or does Druon want the EU to regress to it?

Joel

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