Glossary entry (derived from question below)
English term or phrase:
The Law
English answer:
Law (no article)
- The asker opted for community grading. The question was closed on 2014-07-04 08:54:20 based on peer agreement (or, if there were too few peer comments, asker preference.)
English term
The Law
I have some doubts concerning this sentence. Should it be "Law" or "the Law"?
| 5 +5 | Law (no article) |
Charles Davis
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| 5 | Act |
Charlesp
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| 3 | either is possible |
Tony M
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Jul 1, 2014 10:50: AllegroTrans changed "Level" from "PRO" to "Non-PRO"
Jul 1, 2014 12:03: writeaway changed "Field" from "Other" to "Bus/Financial" , "Field (specific)" from "Tourism & Travel" to "General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters" , "Field (write-in)" from "(none)" to "English usage (legal context)"
Jul 2, 2014 06:32: Charlesp changed "Field" from "Bus/Financial" to "Law/Patents" , "Field (specific)" from "General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters" to "Law (general)"
Non-PRO (3): Lara Barnett, B D Finch, AllegroTrans
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Responses
Law (no article)
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Note added at 42 mins (2014-07-01 07:39:04 GMT)
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Tony is right that in English laws (statutes) are called acts, and their names do include "the", as in "The Defamation Act 2013", for example. But in in English the act or law is not numbered; it's identified by the subject and the date.
If the name of the law in your example did not include a number, you would not put an article. You would call it "The Business Activity Licensing Act/Law of 23 April 2013", or whatever. But you would not put "The Law/Act no. 123 of 23 April 2013 on Business Activity Licensing". That would sound completely unnatural.
There is no direct analogy with the names of laws in English, but if it were a numbered resolution or executive order, for example, there would be no doubt at all that the article would not be used. You would never say: "According to the Executive Order/Resolution 123 issued by the Ministry of X", for example; it would always be "According to Executive Order/Resolution 123 issued by the Ministry of X".
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Note added at 45 mins (2014-07-01 07:41:51 GMT)
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Pardon the confusion: in the second paragraph of the added note, I meant to say "If the name of the law in your example did not include a number, you WOULD put an article".
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Note added at 49 mins (2014-07-01 07:46:04 GMT)
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By the way, I don't know what the prevailing practice is in other languages, but in legal translation from Spanish to English some people translate Ley as Act and others as Law. Both practices are accepted. So there is nothing unusual, to those accustomed to this field, in reading something like "Law no. 123 of 23 April 2013", and to me it doesn't seem odd at all because I'm used to it. Some people prefer to put "Law" because they tend to feel that "Act no. 123 of 23 April 2013" sounds odd.
| Thank you very much for your answer! |
either is possible
Laws in the UK are known as 'Acts', and are usually referred to by name; in this case, they will be used with the definite article:
"The 2002 Smith Act provides for..."
However, when translating foreign laws in this way, referred to by number and date, it's hard to know what to do for the best; my natural instinct would be to omit the def. article — but one could hardly say it would be wrong to include it: at best, one might say it makes something that sounds slightly odd in the first place sound slightly odder still!
| Thank your very much for your answer! |
| neutral |
writeaway
: not in this context. no article.
37 mins
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I think you're probably right; I really just wanted to give a fuller explanation.
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Act
It is an "Act" - if you want to use the proper term in legal English.
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