Simone Glanert Senior Lecturer in French and European Comparative Law, Kent Law School, Eliot College, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NS, UK; S.Glanert@kent.ac.uk. I presented early formulations of this argument at the RELINE Network for Interdisciplinary Studies in Language and the Law Seminar, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, on 25 October 2011; at the Faculté de Droit, Université de Montréal, on 27 January 2012; at the 4th Annual Meeting of the Irish Society of Comparative Law (ISCL), Faculty of Law, University of Cork, on 2 March 2012; and at the Faculté de Droit, Université de Grenoble, on 22 March 2012. I am grateful to Anne Lise Kjær, Jean-Franois Gaudreault-DesBiens, Bénédicte Fuller-Sage and David Dechenaud for their kind expression of interest in my work and generous invitations.