Incorporation of the EU Legal Terminology into the Slovenian Legal System

The aim of the research programme is the transposition of the European law terminology, namely the legal terminology of the European Union in to the Slovene language, whereby its work activities are divided among the sheer acts of translation and placement of relevant legal terms in to the Slovenian legal order and a wider notion of an active and dynamic approach to substantiated and careful tuning and development of the Slovenian legal language for the needs of both and foremost practicing lawyers and the academia. The development of the European Union, together with its functioning, has proved that the questions of legal terminology are even more than ten years after the Slovene accession to the Union still very relevant. Terminological questions form an integrative part of the responsibility of making coexistence of the domestic and European legal order possible. In the line of its work, the research group is therefore translating relevant legal terms from English into Slovene and adding a broad dictionary definition and interpretation to the translation. Thus, the legal terms are not only subject to the mechanical change of language, but are also lexicographically treated in its content. By applying such treatment, the research group among others interprets the term from the comparative, historical, purposive, practical and terminological standpoint by comparing the meaning of the term in different legal orders or legal traditions, by looking at the development of the relevant case-law or the preparatory work behind different legal acts or by exploring the use of a term in the European Union’s and domestic legal sources both in theory and practice. With the analysis being rich in content and transgressing bare conceptual analysis, the research group is striving towards linguistic consistency of the legal order, its conceptual and contextual clarity (especially in the cases where a term holds several meanings or does not yet possess an equivalent in the Slovene legal order) and is thereby taking on a part of the responsibility of caring for the principle of legal certainty, that is predictability or foreseeability and clarity of the legal provisions, all being elements of the wider notion of the constitutional rule of law principle. The goal of the research group is the formation of a clear, transparent and contextually rich dictionary dedicated to the European legal terminology, designed both for practicing lawyers in different legal branches (the judiciary, Bar, the economy) and legal scholars, researchers or students.