Continental European Tradition Research Articles

Spanish Auditors and the 'True and Fair View'

In 1990 a new Spanish 'Plan General de Contabilidad' (PGC) implementedthe requirements of the EU 4th and 7th Directives in Spain. Included in the PGC is the requirement, derived from the 4th Directive, that accounts should present a 'true and fair view', in Spanish 'imagen fiel'. Where the term has been used in English speaking jurisdictions it has proved to have a variety of shades of meaning, and to have had strikingly different impact in different countries. Within the European Union the term has been seen as a 'Trojan horse', inserted into the 4th Directive to inject an Anglo-Saxon approach of flexibility and judgement dependent accounting into a Continental European accounting tradition of detailed prescription and uniformity. In this paper we report on a survey of the views and experience of Spanish auditors relating to 'imagen fiel'. Specifically, we:1) Review the English language literature on 'true and fair view' to identify the key areas of controversy.2) Consider the significance of the 'true and fair view' within the EU 4th Directive.3) Report on the experience of Spanish auditors in working with this concept, their views on the value of the term, and their experience in use of the true and fair view 'override'.

Reclaiming Critical Criminology:

This article seeks to examine the relevance of the continental European tradition in critical criminology for the theoretical elaboration of criminological theory today. The first step towards an answer is a rather descriptive one: how did critical criminology develop historically on the European continent? That is the theme of the first section. In the second section, the social and cultural developments which accompanied the heyday of critical criminology in the 1970s will be analysed, and an exposé will be given of the spectrum of the different critical perspectives on the continent. The same cultural sociological line of thought will be followed in the explanation of the rather abrupt decline of critical criminology shortly after in the third section. The need for a normative counter-weight to present-day, managerial political discourse which follows from these analyses also forms the prelude to a reaffirmation of critical criminology in section four. Because many of its original concepts and presumptions no longer fit very well to the changed political and socio-cultural reality of the late 1990s, a reconstruction of critical criminology is proposed in section five.

Lingüística e Filologia. O eterno debate

The relationship between 'philology' and 'linguistcs' has been a contentious issue in the study of language for over 150 years. This paper sketches part of the origins of the philology/linguistics debate and, at the same time, hints at some of the reasons behind certain differences between the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental European terminological traditions. The value of terms like philology,philologie (comparee), Philologie; and linguistics, linguistique, Sprachwissenschaft, Linguistik, as well as the scope of the sope of the corresponding disciplines they used to designate are reviseted, tracing their usage among some generations of 19th and 20th century linguistics.

Civil Law and Common Law Traditions: Judicial Review and Legislative Supremacy in West Germany and Canada

THERE are a number of areas in which traditional common law and civil law systems are said to differ. These include judicial training and prestige, the supremacy of the legislative enactment, the role of precedent and stare decisis, the influence of legal scholars, the collegiality of members of the judiciary, the relationship between the judiciary and the legislature, and the relative status of the judge and the popularly elected representative with regard to law-making powers. many ways the differences are more apparent than real in the normal functioning of the legal systems within each tradition; yet the folklore persists. Certainly the historical traditions of each system have contributed to the persistence of the folklore. When considering whether statutes have priority over the common law, Sir Edward Coke, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, stated: In some cases the common law will control acts of Parliament and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void.3 civil law tradition, on the contrary, tends to subordinate judicial power to the legislative: The continental European tradition.. . which sees the statute as the instrument for effecting needed economic (and other) change, and which expects the judge to consider himself as closely bound by the language of the statute . . . which he is called upon to apply to a given case, leaves much less room for such innovative judicial work.' This article explores the reality of the folklore by focusing upon the relationship between the judiciary and the legislature within a common law and