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- Title
WHAT DOES JUSTICE HAVE TO DO WITH INTERPRETERS IN THE JURY ROOM?
- Authors
Johnson, Lydia D.
- Abstract
Over decades there have been many judicial battles lost and won to shape and mold the justice system to reflect a system of equality, especially when selecting jury members. These instances range anywhere from the Batson decision, that eliminated the purposeful exclusion of African American citizens from juries because of racial motives, to the Hernandez case, where the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional to exclude citizens based upon race, national origin, and/or descent. While racial biases have been found unconstitutional, language bias is still practiced across the United States. American citizens who are not proficient in the English language are systematically excused from jury service. Among those excluded are naturalized citizens, who do not necessarily have to be proficient in English to become American citizens. A cure for this exclusion is to permit the use of interpreters, not just for defendants, witnesses, and/or hearing impaired citizens, but for jury members as well, and when interpreters are not physically available, the implementation of innovative technology should be used. Shedding light on this issue would expel the discriminatory practice of excluding non-English speaking citizens, thus restoring their constitutional rights as citizens.
- Subjects
UNITED States; JUSTICE; UNITED States. Supreme Court; RACISM; DECISION making in law; CONSTITUTIONAL law
- Publication
UMKC Law Review, 2016, Vol 84, Issue 4, p941
- ISSN
0047-7575
- Publication type
Article