Interesting thread. I know pathetically little about how American courts actually operate (concerning grounds for appeals, etc.), but the general topic of linguistic pluralism greatly interests me. The jury system really seems to push the limit of how far linguistic pluralism can be accommodated in American society – even in New Mexico!
Still, most of the arguments I’ve read above that are against including non-English-speakers on juries seem to revolve around matters of inconvenience or impracticality rather than matters of principle. Most of these same arguments could also be used in favor of disallowing deaf or blind people from being on juries. Would a deaf person fare any better during jury deliberations than a non-English-speaker? Would his or her presence be any less “disruptive” to the process? Would the “filtering” influence of an interpreter be any less of an issue here? Judging from what I’ve read above about ASL etc. (very informative, by the way!), I would think not. Yet, in principle, American courts seem willing to accommodate deaf people so that they can take part on juries. (I’m sure some other jurors would privately grumble about the distraction, the inconvenience to themselves, etc., but that’s beside the point.)
So if, in principle, we are willing to accept deaf people as jurors, why not other people who also need the services of a translator/interpreter?
One argument could be that because lack of proficiency in English, unlike deafness, does not have the legal status of a disability, there’s no reason to bother with people who can’t speak English; the law doesn’t call for it. Well, I suppose. But to me, it just sounds like another way of saying that “we” wouldn’t want to bother with deaf people, either, if we didn’t have to.
Another argument could be that, hey, if naturalized citizens haven’t learned how to speak English fluently even after having lived in the U.S. for five years, they must not be up to snuff as citizens – if they haven’t learned English, how on earth could they really be tuned into Truth, Justice, and the American Way? Lack of English ability indicates lack of assimilation, right? That might seem compelling enough, but I think that if we accept this line of thinking then the logical conclusion would seem to be that these people shouldn’t have been granted citizenship in the first place. You’re either a citizen or you’re not. We could, I suppose, set higher standards for what counts as an acceptable level of linguistic and cultural assimilation for citizenship (maybe let a Republican-controlled Congress take a stab at this?), but is that really the direction we would want to take?
Personally, as a matter of principle, I would much rather see juries with translators/interpreters on hand than juries deemed to be adequately “assimilated” (by someone’s arbitrary standards). And yes, I know it’s easy to say “in principle”! As people have made clear in earlier posts, there would of course be plenty of complications and costs involved, and it might be extraordinarily difficult to work out in practice.
On a related note, does anyone know how countries with more than one official language do work out this kind of thing in practice? Say Canada, or Switzerland, or South Africa, or India? (Not sure which of these use juries.) Anyone?
