Law and Language Workshop - Ross Pey

This workshop with Ross Pey, Western Law PhD candidate, titled “Issues with Bilingual Legislation and Potential Solutions for Bilingual Welsh Legislation“ is open to academics (faculty, students and other researchers) interested in law and language from within and outside Western.

This session will be held in a hybrid format, those who wish to participate virtually can register to recieve the Zoom link. 

Abstract

The UK has recently joined the club of bilingual jurisdictions as Welsh legislation is equally authentic in Welsh and English. However, unlike many other bilingual Commonwealth jurisdictions, the UK does not have the benefit of local jurisprudence that tackles the issues arising from bilingual legislation. In fact, the issue of bilingual interpretation was only recently raised in a Welsh case and has not been seriously interrogated in the literature. In this talk, I explore and categorise some of the issues raised by bilingual legislation from a survey of Commonwealth cases and legislative practices. I will then identify the issues which may be relevant to Welsh statutes. I also observe that the most problematic issue that could arise is a conflict between the Welsh and English language texts. In this light, I suggest an approach to resolving such conflicts that is grounded in the UK’s purposive method of interpretation.