![handle is hein.journals/griffith30 and id is 1 raw text is: GRIFFITH LAW REVIEW
2021, VOL. 30, NO. 1, 1-17
https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2021.1996883
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
Linguistic diversity as a challenge and an opportunity for
improved legal policy
Alexandra Grey and Laura Smith-Khan -
Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, Australia
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article introduces this Themed Issue, Linguistic Diversity as a Linguistic justice; law and
Challenge to Legal Policy, and reports a small, peer-reviewed language research; public
study of the integration of research about language issues in policy; judiciary; legislature;
legal contexts in Australian legal education. The article explains executive; legal education
that interdisciplinary law and linguistics research has emerged to
better understand potential inequalities and injustices. This
research speaks to concerns shared across many legal systems
because both multilingualism and inter-lingual prejudice are
common phenomena across nations. The Themed Issue's eleven
contributions draw scholarly attention to specific, current
problems in legal contexts which relate to language practices
and/or policies about language, arranged around the familiar
three branches of the state (legislature, executive, judiciary). The
Themed Issue is aimed at endowing readers with motivation and
basic knowledge to tread new, language-aware routes towards
solutions based on collaborative research and policy reform. In
regards to integrating such research into legal education, our
NSW and ACT study found few course offerings which focus on
an intersection of linguistic and legal scholarship. We therefore
suggest the development of electives or the inclusion of such
material in core subjects (timely given the 'Priestly 11'
compulsory subjects are under review at the time of writing).
Overview
Inter-lingual miscommunication and linguistically-encoded prejudices cause inequitable
access to justice systems and to the legal processes of bureaucracies, and inequitable treat-
ment within them.' That 'legal language' is often inaccessible to non-lawyers is well-
recognised2 and the implications of inaccessible legal language are important, but here
CONTACT Alexandra Grey 1 alexandra.grey@uts.edu.au - Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo,
NSW 2007, Australia
'Readers will note that we have endeavoured to provide free, online sources throughout the footnotes, in addition to
citing academic sources. For an introduction to linguistically-encoded prejudices, see eg McWhorter (2020) [an
online source], reviewing Kinzler (2020).
2This includes recognition by legal educators and law students, prompting law degree courses such as Melbourne Law
School's 'Legal Language'; we discuss similar subjects further in this Editorial's final section. For an academic discussion
of legal language, see Solan et al. (2015) pp 1-63, or Wright (2017) for a short overview of the scholarship. See also
Pirker and Smolka (2020) for an overview of how certain subfields of linguistics each relate to the drafting and practice
of international law and for the example (p 506) of the Swiss Government's 'establishment and operation of specialized
bodies within administrations that support legislative work by systematically improving legislative proposals' to avert
unintended ambiguity in legal language.
© 2021 Griffith University](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/griffith30&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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