Language Impairment and Legal Literacy: Is a Degree of Perfectionism Unavoidable?

摘要

Wszalek (2017) offers a detailed examination of the challenges involved in assisting people with language and communication impairments in the comprehension of legal language and concepts (LLC). Yet it remains unclear what counts as an ethically unacceptable disadvantage in comprehending LLC. As the reader has most likely observed, the different choices regarding profession and leisure activities contribute to an enormous discrepancy in the comprehension of complex language, even among people who enjoyed the same primary and secondary education. If we settle for a minimum threshold of LLC comprehension, we are likely to observe that some people will not meet this threshold due to personal choices, such as not having practiced reading sufficiently or having avoided intellectually stimulating social interactions. While as a society we might want to choose to assist people who suffer from bad luck, that is, impairments caused by misfortunes, there is a wide resistance against showing the same kind of support to assist people who are in a position of disadvantage due to choices made throughout their lives. As the ability to comprehend LLC is crucial to benefit from protected legal rights and to do one’s share in the administration of justice, the question of who will bear the costs of failure (or partial failure) to sufficiently develop language and communication skills becomes central. Due to space constraints, I focus in this commentary only on those who had a real choice in developing language capabilities.