Conferring Official Language Rights in Legal Communication

This chapter asks two questions about the nature of official language rights. The first is a practical one—whether and how official language law enhances language rights for the communities concerned. A comparative approach is taken to answer this question, which will also reveal situations where official language rights conflict with existing legal principles and norms. The second question is a philosophical one. Should language rights derived from official status be distinguished from language rights derived from fair trial rights? Since natural justice rationale only seeks to ensure effective communication and fair trial, and is indifferent to the choice of particular languages, the enlargement of language rights through official status must be justified through additional principles. Courts in multilingual jurisdictions have been trying to come up with persuasive principles that justify the derivation of language rights from official status. Such justifications include a constitutional promise about linguistic equality, the cultural survival of official language communities, and respect for the cultural identity of these communities.