Epistemic injustice in court proceedings: A retrial on linguistic barriers to section 34 of the Constitution, or vindicating the right of access to justice

A retrial on linguistic barriers to section 34 of the Constitution, or vindicating the right of access to justice

Abstract

From calls for the equal treatment of languages to making justice more accessible, linguistic barriers to the right of access to justice persist in South Africa. While the realisation of constitutional rights is often met with considerable difficulty, a prompting question is whether the South African legal landscape can offer insight on the prevalence of specifically linguistic obstacles to the right of access to justice. This paper endorses the affirmative by arguing that linguistic barriers to the right of access to justice provide fertile ground for litigants to suffer injustice of a special kind, a kind that the philosopher Miranda Fricker calls “epistemic injustice”. Not only does the contribution aim to confront linguistic barriers to access to justice; it also seeks to elevate the status of “epistemic injustice” in South African legal discourse.