Rights, Language, and Law

Dimitry Kochenov, University of Groningen Faculty of Law, and Fernand De Varennes, University of Hong Kong, University of Pretoria, Vytautas Magnus University, are publishing Language and Law, in Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning (F. Hult and D. Johnson eds., Wiley, 2014). Here is the abstract.

This elementary introduction into the difficult relationship between language and law written for non-lawyers outlines some key steps in the development of the legal approaches towards allowing people to speak their own language and outlines several key trends in the recent developments relevant in this field: a shift from the culture of authority to the culture of justification and the acceptance of the ethos of rights in approaching the relationship between law and language as opposed to the ethos of duties prevalent in the past.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.