Juris Publishing - French Business Law in Translation

French Business Law in Translation - 2nd Edition

George A. Bermann

Price: $225.00 840 pages. 1 Hardcover Volume. Updated annually or when needed. To be Published September 2008.
ISBN-13: 978-157823-245-1

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French Business Law
$225.00

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Table of Contents

About the Book:
French Business Law in Translation constitutes a unique collection of translations of those French laws that really matter in an international business context. It presents a bilingual version of the French laws and regulations which the authors have condensed from tens of thousands of pages of text down to the “essence” of the law in each of the fifteen subject areas composing the work. They refer to those parts of the applicable rules and regulations in French law that are of recurrent importance to business professionals and legal practitioners involved in international business. By adding the relevant French text in a column directly across from the translation into English, this 2nd edition has a whole new dimension which enhances the work’s value and makes it an invaluable resource in legal linguistics for international practitioners and academics. The selection of texts has been made by members of the Paris law firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker (Europe) LLP, under the direction of Pierre Kirch. A team of advanced French and American law students at Columbia University Law School, supervised by Professor George Bermann, have prepared the basic translations. The definitive translations and chapter introductions have been prepared by the authors.

Through a sound translation of the legislation which recurringly applies to ordinary and usual business situations, it is possible to discern the philosophy underlying the French system and reflective of how France conceives and regulates business phenomena that are in themselves essentially universal. It is no secret among players on the international stage that business is done in France in a heavily regulated environment. In this respect, a public offering of securities, or an IPO, or a public tender offer (or, indeed, a takeover battle) can best be understood through a review of the various rules and regulations which constitute their regulatory framework. In the same way, although competition law concepts tend now towards convergence with European Union legislation, the French approach continues to have certain particularities: for instance, in merger control cases, although the concepts and the procedures tend to resemble those of EU law, the criteria for evaluating the impact of a merger on competition diverge somewhat from those set out in the EU’s merger regulation and applied by the European Commission. Tax and labor laws have also become very complex over the years. For instance, in situations involving dismissal on economic grounds, French labor law imposes a number of procedural and other constraints on the employer and grants the employee significant rights.

In a French setting, transactional work invariably involves not only fundamental contractual concepts set out in the Civil Code, but also, in particular, securities law, intellectual property, competition, tax and labor law considerations. That is the reason why significant extracts of these fast-evolving areas of the law have been translated and included in French Business Law in Translation. Each chapter opens with a brief introduction to the subject and an outline of its contents. The purpose is to allow the reader to place the translated legislation and rules in their overall context. The selection of translated material is done in such way as to enable the reader to appreciate in their full scope the fundamentals of each area of the law, as conceived by the legislator, the French Government and, in certain cases, independent regulatory authorities. a glossary to each chapter. This glossary is not intended to be a complete “dictionary,” but rather to give a preliminary idea of the conceptual linguistic tools used in each of the subject-area chapters.

Legal translation is not an exact science, but based on the authors combined experience of more than 50 years in dealing with the fascinating differences between French law and US law, they are keenly aware of the fact that the translation of legal language is not made by the translation of words, but rather by an attempt to use words to achieve an (often rough) equivalence of concepts. By putting the French original across from the translation, and by investing themselves in the qualitative value of seeking not words but conceptual equivalents or explanations for the rules of French law, they hope to have fostered a deeper understanding of the laws and regulations governing business in France. This should not only better inform those lawyers involved internationally but also be instructive to French lawyers interested in the recurrent linguistic characteristics of French legal texts. This can only be shown when the French original is compared with the appropriate conceptual link to American legal English.

About the Authors:
George A. Bermann is the Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law and Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he also directs the European Legal Studies Center.

Prior to joining the Columbia faculty in 1975 he practiced as an associate at the New York law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. Professor Bermann is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Professor Bermann teaches and writes extensively in the fields of European Law, Comparative Law, Transnational Litigation and Arbitration, and WTO dispute resolution. He is the author or editor of, among other books, Introduction to French Law (co-editor Picard, Kluwer Pub.), Transnational Litigation (West Pub.), Law and Governance in an enlarged European Union (co-editor Pistor, Hart Pub.), Transatlantic Regulatory Co-operation: Legal Problems and Political Prospects (co-editor Lindseth, Oxford Univ.), and Cases and Materials on European Union Law (co-authors Goebel, Davey & Fox, West Pub.). He is a visiting member of the law faculties of the Universities of Paris I and II, the Collège d’Europe (Bruges, Belgium) and the Institut des Sciences Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris.

George Bermann is currently President of the Académie internationale de droit comparé (based in Paris) and Co-editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Comparative Law. He founded and is chair of the executive editorial board of the Columbia Journal of European Law. He has served throughout his academic career both as an expert on foreign law in U.S. courts and international arbitral tribunals. An experienced international commercial arbitrator, he is currently Chief Reporter of the American Law Institute’s new Restatement of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration.

Pierre Kirch is a partner with Paul Hastings, and divides his time between the firm's offices in Paris and Brussels. Though a generalist of French and international business law, his practice is devoted in particular to the fields of French and EU competition/antitrust law (including State aid). Having practiced for more than twenty years in this field, he has been recognized as a leading competition/antitrust practitioner by such publications as Chambers Global 2008 and Chambers Europe 2007, the Guide to the World’s Leading Competition and Antitrust Lawyers (Legal Media Group, 7th edition, 2006-2007), The European Legal 500 and the French review, Décideurs Stratégie Finance (in its last market survey for France, published in September 2007).

Pierre Kirch is a graduate of Dartmouth and of the University of Paris Law School (Paris I and Paris II). He is a past president of the Dartmouth Club of France. He is the immediate past chair of the EU law section of the Union Internationale des Avocats and currently serves as rapporteur of AmCham EU’s working group on State aid in Brussels. He is also a founding member of the Editorial Board of the French language quarterly review specialized in competition law, Concurrences (Thomson/Transactive). Mr. Kirch has contributed to publications such as European Competition Law: A Guide to the EC and its Member States (LexisNexis/Matthew Bender; chapter on France), Merger Control in Europe (Kluwer Law International; chapter on France), Droit européen des affaires (co-author, Dunod), Economic Analysis of State Aid Rules: Contributions and Limits (co-author, Lexxion).

Mr. Kirch is a member of the Paris and Brussels Bars. Before joining Paul Hastings as a partner in 2004, he was a partner at Moquet Borde & Associés.

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