Judgments rendered by Anglo-American courts are often referred to as “opinions.” In this context “opinion” is “a court’s written statement explaining its decision in a given case, usually including the statement of facts, points of law, rationele and dicta” (Black’s Law Dictionary, 8th. ed.). I’ve recently seen several Spanish texts that used “opinión” to refer to the decision of a court that would have perhaps been better described as either its “sentencia” or “fallo.” Other related expressions worth noting include

• separate opinion (voto particular)
• dissenting opinion (voto particular disidente/discrepante)
• concurring opinion (voto particular concurrente)
• judge delivering the opinion of the Court (magistrado ponente)
• “It is the opinion of this Court…” (“Es el parecer de esta Sala/de este Tribunal…”)

In other respects, dictamen no vinculante is an “advisory opinion” and dictamen pericial is an “expert witness opinion,” while what is widely known in civil law countries as doctrina can be appropriately rendered as “academic opinion” (or also as “legal scholarship,” “scholarly writing” or perhaps “the writings of law professors and legal scholars”).

Alimentos has been rendered as “alimony” in several bilingual dictionaries but in Spanish law these expressions are not cognates. “Alimony” (also called “spousal support,” “spousal maintenance,” “financial provision for spouse,” etc.) is the English-language equivalent of what in Spanish law is known as a pensión compensatoria, a court-ordered allowance that one spouse pays to the economically weaker one as the result of a separation or divorce agreement (called convenio regulador) “para compensar el desequilibrio económico padecido por un cónyuge ” (Art. 97 CC). In Spain spousal support orders may provide for “permanent alimony” (pensión compensatoria indefinida), “temporary alimony,” (pensión compensatoria temporal), or “lump sum alimony” or “alimony in gross” (prestación compensatoria única; prestación a tanto alzado).

Rather than referring to “alimony,” in this context alimentos refers to a pensión alimenticia para los hijos, denoting what in English is most commonly known as “child support,” the amount paid after separation or divorce (usually by the noncustodial or nonresidential parent to the custodial or residential parent) for expenses incurred for children of the marriage (also called “child maintenance,” “child support maintenance,” etc.)

In a broader sense alimentos may likewise denote an obligación de alimentos or deuda alimenticia, i.e., a family member’s legal obligation to provide economic maintenance to another (Arts. 142 ff. CC). In this context, alimentante refers to the family member who provides economic support or maintenance to another, i.e., the “support (or) maintenance provider,” while the “support (or) maintenance recipient,” is described as an alimentista.

Jurisprudencia and “jurisprudence” are another pair of look-alikes that shouldn’t be confused. Jurisprudencia is the Spanish term for “caselaw” (“case law” in British English, also called “decisional law”), that is, judgments rendered by courts of justice, while in its strictest sense “jurisprudence” is the science of law or legal theory (sharing some of the content of the disciplines of Teoría del Derecho and Filosofía del Derecho as traditionally taught in Spanish law schools). Thus jurisprudencia del Tribunal Supremo refers to “Supreme Court caselaw,” while expressions such as jurisprudencia (or) doctrina jurisprudencial sentada/reiterada/pácifica denote “established (or) settled caselaw.” In that regard, in Spanish published collections of caselaw or electronically-accessible caselaw databases are called repertorios de jurisprudencia, which are variously known in English as “law reports,” “law reporters,” “caselaw reports,” or “caselaw reporters.”

Despite the above, it should be noted that the term “jurisprudence” is sometimes used in English with the meaning of “caselaw,” particularly in jurisdictions where French is or formerly was the official language, such as Quebec and Louisiana. In Louisiana, for example, established or settled caselaw is called “jurisprudence constante.” Likewise, “jurisprudence” is sometimes used with the meaning of “caselaw” in documents issued in English by international organizations in which French is one of the official languages, notably the European Union and Council of Europe. As an example, EU institutions often use “caselaw” and “jurisprudence” as synonyms, such as on the European Commission’s Banking and Finance webpage where the two terms are used interchangeably. In that regard, the webpage contains a “Guide to the case law of the European Court of Justice” and “Case law on ‘golden shares’” alongside a “Chronological overview of selected jurisprudence” and “Selected jurisprudence by topic.”*

* http://ec.europa.eu/finance/capital/framework/court/index_en.htm#maincontentSec1

Órgano and “organ” are another pair of often-confused “false friends”. They are certainly cognates when used in legal (and other) contexts to refer to organs of the human body, as in transplante de órganos (“organ transplants”) or donantes de órganos (“organ donors”). And órgano may likewise be rendered as “organ” when referring to periodicals published by organizations such as political parties, as in Granma, Órgano Oficial del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (“Granma, Official Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba”).

But in other legal contexts órgano often more appropriately denotes an “institution,” “governing body,” “board” or “agency.” Examples include órgano consultivo (“advisory body,” “advisory board”); órgano de gobierno (“governing body”); órgano de la Unión Europea (“institution of the European Union”) or órganos de la Administración del Estado (“governmental agencies”).

As another example, órganos constitucionales del Estado denotes the principal “institutions of the Spanish state” created and regulated in the Constitution, including the Crown (la Corona), the Spanish parliament (las Cortes Generales) comprising the House of Deputies (Congreso de los Diputados) and Senate (Senado), the government (Gobierno), Constitutional Court (Tribunal Constitucional) and the General Council of the Judiciary (Consejo General del Poder Judicial).

And special mention should be made of the use of órgano in the sense of “court.” In that regard, órgano jurisdiccional and órgano judicial are generic expressions for “court” that are used when no distinction needs to be made between juzgados (courts with a single sitting judge) and tribunales (multi-judge courts in which several judges, usually three, sit in panels). Indeed juzgados and tribunales are often referred to respectively as órganos unipersonales and órganos colegiados. Thus, for example, in this context el órgano que dictó sentencia denotes the “court that rendered judgment,” órganos judiciales competentes are “courts of competent jurisdiction,” and the expression órganos jurisdiccionales del orden civil is a general reference to the “civil courts.”