I have just discovered that a conference is to be held on 7 November 2013 in Fribourg, celebrating 250 years of law in the town. It is publicized as being open to the general public, and will broach the following points:

How does language determine the content of the law? Is law translatable? What is the language of law? How do different cultures interpret the same international legal texts?

Here is the advertised programme:

I. Introduction

• Law and Language: Introducing a Threshold Question for Our Times (Simone Glanert, University of Kent)

II. Is There a Lingua Franca?

• Sceptical Remarks (Denise Réaume, University of Toronto)
• Friendship, Language, and the Invention of Foreign Law (Pierre Legrand, Ecole de droit de la Sorbonne)

III. Le multilinguisme et le droit

• Harmonisation du droit et multilinguisme: une coexistence impossible? (Gianmaria Ajani, Université de Turin)
• Le multilinguisme en Suisse (Marc Bors, Université de Fribourg)

IV. Le droit à la langue

• Le droit à la langue: au-delà des frontières linguistiques (Adriano Previtali, Université de Fribourg)
• Langue et Code civil en Catalogne: l’identité culturelle à l’heure européenne (Nuria Gines, ESADE Barcelona)

V. Language, Law and Interpretation

• The Language of the CISG: Chinese Perceptions (Zhang Mingje, Shanghai, Lecturer at the MLCBP, University of Fribourg)
• Le juge face au droit étranger (Franz Werro, Université de Fribourg, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.)

VI. Language as Law and the Language of Law

• Tort Law, Language and Disability (Nili Karakoe-Eyal, School of Law, COMAS, Tel-Aviv)
• Yes (Shari Motro, University of Richmond School of Law)
• The Language of the Visual (Naomi Mezey, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.
• Concluding Remarks (Marcel Niggli, University of Fribourg)

Further information can be found here, and the full programme is here.

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Credit: Thanks to Mette Saabye Maaløe for the heads-up.