nullify 復習
今年の７月に行われた参議院選挙で、１票の格差が最大で３．０８倍だったことについて、広島高等裁判所岡山支部は「違憲状態」だったという判決を言い渡しました。
Court nixes bid to void election, calls for decrease in vote disparity
OKAYAMA--A branch of the Hiroshima High Court here ruled that the July 10 Upper House election was held in a "state of unconstitutionality," citing voter disparity. But it stopped short of voiding the outcome.
The Oct. 14 ruling by the Okayama branch of the court is the first in a series of lawsuits filed by two groups of lawyers at 14 high courts or branches soon after the July poll.
It did not nullify the results on grounds the Diet had taken steps to rectify the imbalance in the value of a single vote.
The lawyers argued that the election went ahead even though the value of a single vote in the least populous prefecture of Fukui was worth 3.08 times that of one in Saitama Prefecture, the most populous in terms of the number of seats for that prefecture in relation to its population.
以下省略
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20161014/k10010730051000.html
今回取り上げる表現は、“nullify”です。『ウィズダム英和辞典』(第３版、三省堂)を引いたところ、「〘法〙…を無効にする；〈契約など〉を破棄する；…を取り消す」とありました。
確認のためにLDOCEを引いたところ、“law to officially state that something has no legal force”と定義されていました。
接尾辞の“-ify”をとった“null”は「法的効力のない、無効な」という意味の形容詞です(『ウィズダム英和辞典』)。慣用句の“null and void”という形で用いられることも多いようで、「(法律上)無効の」という意味になります。(Blue Sky)
“null”を含む表現を先生が以前取り上げられておられるので、そちらもぜひご覧ください。
