My co-worker’s husband (in Toronto) would insist on a French-language trial whenever he got a speeding ticket. Apparently that resulted in the ticket getting dismissed more often than not.
I can’t remember where but there used to be a Pacific Island that was jointly administered by the UK and France (Vanuatu?). IIRC the deal was the British would police the island one day, with English speaking courts then the French would the next day and so on. Eventually UK had enough and made the island independent and the French were so cranky about it they refused to attend the ceremony and took all of their equipment, office supplies etc and shipped it back home.
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In South Africa, everyone has the right to use one of the 11 official languages in court, but English has been the only language of record for all courts since 2017.
When you say “everyone” can choose which language to use, does that include judges and prosecutors? Or do they just speak English?
It can take a while, but as I am sure you know, Northern Piper, things can be arranged for proceedings to take place in French in Anglophone Canada.
A Francophone friend and colleague of mine, located in Edmonton, gets some work this way. It hasn’t happened often, but he has been called in to represent various interests in French in the courts in Edmonton, and environs. As I said, it takes some time to pull everybody together (lawyers, judge, clerk, etc.), but he has acted for clients in entirely-in-French proceedings here in primarily-Anglophone Alberta.
Agreed; It is fairly common to have an interpreter in UK courts, but the trial is conducted in English. Even if the judge and counsel spoke English as a second language and had a different language in common, there is no question that the trial would be in English. Even in Wales, where everyone might be Welsh-speaking, the trial is effectively in English.
Simply yes. And it avoids the thorny ethnic issues & also the unique headaches of regional minority languages.
The Eighth Schedule of the [Indian] Constitution consists of the following 22 languages – Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri.
There are some 19,500 languages/dialects that are recognised as distinct.
India’s constitution was adopted from the best practices of UK, US, Ireland, France, Canada, Australia and Soviet Union. Cite : Constitution of India - Wikipedia
India has been a democratic country since 1947 (independence) and has strived to be secular and inclusive.
For Pakistan “The Constitution declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic and Islam as the state religion. It also stated that all laws would have to be brought into accordance with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah and that no law repugnant to such injunctions could be enacted.” cite : Islam in Pakistan - Wikipedia
As a note, Islam unlike other religions, dictates a country’s law, banking and many other systems. A recent example is the death penalty case for a Christian woman in Pakistan for blasphemy.
So the Indian acceptance of many languages is driven by the acceptance and respect of many ethnicities and the idea to let them individually flourish.
In Pakistan “Islam was stated to be more important than ethnicity.” Cite : Islam in Pakistan - Wikipedia
This was one of the reasons Bangladesh broke apart from Pakistan. The Pakistanis imposes Urdu (their language) for all official business whereas the Bangladeshis values their own Bengali language.
Yes
…but also, mostly this.
The big issue is assembling a jury pool. I’ve heard of one case in the NWT where the court services had trouble getting a jury pool of French-speaking jurors, and also that the issue has come up in some areas of Quebec, where it’s been difficult to get a jury pool of English-speaking jurors.
This article from the BBC in 2017 says that there is an increasing number of trials conducted in Welsh, not English:
“Predicted rise in court cases heard in Welsh language”
(And as an aside, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd is a really Welsh name!)
From the wikipedia article, it wasn’t the case. The court was common (one French judge, one British, and until the 1930, one Spanish) and the defendant could choose which law would apply. In fact, you could chose your law for everything. For instance, an immigrant could choose to immigrate under French or British law, a corporation could be created according to French or British law, etc… What I’m wondering is what happened for civil trials if one side wanted French law and the other British law. The article describes the situation as chaotic, which is what I would expect.
The only thing that alternated was the police force.
OK thanks. I remembered hearing this on the audio book “Pacific” making it hard to backtrack the complete situation. Did I have the island right?
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Yes, Vanuatu. previously known as the condominium of New Hebrides.
That already got solved by the Romans* (whose Empire included a multitude of legal systems, plus Roman law itself): if the situation involved a contract, the contract itself needs to say under which courts/legal system will a conflict be decided; if it doesn’t, then the person suing does so under the system of his choice.
- There may have been similar solutions invented by other people, but this is the one that I know of and the one from which European legal systems (and in turn, those of our former colonies) are said to derive it.