Mritunjay Kumar (Himachal Pradesh National Law University; University of Delhi; University of Delhi - Faculty of Law), Aastha Naresh Kohli (Himachal Pradesh National Law University), & Chanchal Kr Singh (Himachal Pradesh National Law University) have posted Decolonizing the Language of Law (India Legal E Magazine, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In this paper we have explored the functionality of language vis-a-vis access to justice. In post-colonial India, there is a legitimate demand to create, administer, and interpret the law in local languages, so that it could represent the voices of demos. In pre-modern India, law was found in customs and usages, which was not dependent upon any sign, symbol, and its interpretation. With the reception of common law in India, the form and character of law transformed through positivization, rationalization, and secularization. Its dependence on the complexities of language proved as instrumental in the development of self-interested legal profession, organised on the principle of monetising access to justice. In this context, is it a disproportionate demand to decolonize the legal language? Decolonization of legal language has potentiality to facilitate 'communicative empowerment' among the people and they could realize the essence of human agency as well as autonomy, without which democracy appears to be a 'justified aristocracy'.
