What Does Bar Mean?
Public legal entities are an indispensable part of the administrative law and one of the centres around which a host of discussions are continuously taking place. A certain class among these public entities, professional organisations, entered into our legal framework with the Constitution of 1961 and gained the status of public legal entity with the Constitution of 1982. These entities, defined in Article 135 of the Constitution of 1982, are communities having a public legal personality under which persons who belong to certain professions gather together. Some of the most well-known professional organisations are the chamber of commerce and industry, chamber of physicians, chamber of architects, and chamber of merchants and craftsmen and bars. As is evident, most such associations begin with the word “chamber” although one of them violates this order: BAR.
Why is there such a Difference in Naming?
Behind this difference regarding the name of bars, which are the professional organisations of attorneys, lies a tradition coming from the Middle Ages that brings this name together. The word bar comes from Latin, the origin of which is the Latin word “barra”. It was borrowed into our language from the French “bureau”, which was translated into English as “bar”, meaning stick, obstacle, or barrier. The word “bar” that we use to refer to a professional organisation literally means obstacle with a stick but gained a distinct meaning in the context of law through a metonymy.
This meaning originates in the courtroom arrangements of the Middle Ages. With a bar, the status of the attorneys who are the eternal guardians of right of defence and the judge and prosecutors, who are the other indispensable bodies of jurisdiction, used to be indicated. While the area behind the obstacle, called the bar, was open to the public, only judges, prosecutors, attorneys, their clients, and other officials were allowed to have the privilege of standing before it.
Based on this metaphor, the professional organisation of the attorneys took the name of bar.
Passing the Bar Exam
Besides this, graduates of law school in the countries where the Anglo-Saxon legal order prevails need to take an exam called the “Bar Exam” in order to obtain the certificate. Achieving a successful score in this exam is described as “passing the bar”, which actually implies having authority to pass beyond the obstacle, that is, the area open to the public.
What is the German word for bar?
Of course, the professional organisation of attorneys is not described in the same way across all languages. In German, as it is in other professional organisations, the word meaning bar, “Rechtsanwaltskammer”, ends with “-e Kammer” which literally means “chamber”.
