The right to understand

Equality before the law is central to the Australian justice system but the principle doesn’t always operate as intended for those whose language backgrounds are not English.

UTS Law’s Dr Alexandra Grey and Dr Laura Smith-Khan are Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Fellows and both are working in the relatively new research and study area of linguistics and the law.

They argue that the right to understand is often undermined by the mono-lingual norms and beliefs in our legal and regulatory processes:

Along with co-founding the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Researchers' Network, Dr Grey and Dr Smith-Khan have edited an issue of the Griffith Law Review (GRL) focusing on studies from a diverse group of academic colleagues.

They explain that the themed issue places an overall emphasis on language practices and language rights as gateways to full and fair legal participation and protection:

“The right of communication cuts across many different rights including legislatively-enshrined rights to freedom of expression, recognition of equality before the law, cultural rights, freedom from cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment in institutional settings, and rights to education and health services.”

The GLR edition covers a range of areas where language barriers create inequality including: explaining the right to silence in police investigations, the under-supply of interpreters in civil and criminal matters, the English proficiency requirements for Registered Migration Agents and problems with the way Australian governments communicate in languages other than English.

Dr Grey and Dr Smith-Khan believe there’s a need to improve legal professionals’ understanding and awareness of multilingualism and that one way to achieve this is through reforms to legal education, specifically the introduction of further courses on language and the law:

“While there is a diversity of subjects currently which appear to touch upon one or more intersection of linguistic and legal scholarship, there are few that offer this intersection as a focus … This is a timely discussion to start in Australia, given that the eleven compulsory subjects across Australian law schools (the ‘Priestly 11’) are currently under review.”