Presentation

Access to justice in a recognized language (either official or minority language) is one of the most relevant but also delicate of language rights, since it concerns the entire law system and involves many decisions of distributional and political character. One of the risks in bi- or multilingual jurisdictions is to reduce justice to a language service for an important segment of citizens. Justice is more than a (language) service: it aims at the realization of the rule of law and has an important impact on the (de)legitimization of the state. In what language individuals may interact with the judiciary and surrounding staff expresses the extent of (in)equality and (dis)empowerment of speakers of different languages.