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CHAPTER FIVE

IMPLEMENTING LINGUISTIC RIGHTS IN THROUGH LEGAL EDUCATION IN FINNISH AND SWEDISH1

Markku Suksi

A. Introduction

Education in the fi eld of law has a direct connection with the Finnish system of linguistic rights and their realisation.2 Section 17, sub- section 2, of the gives the right to speakers of both Finnish and Swedish to use their language in dealings with courts and administrative agencies. Th ese linguistic rights must be guaran- teed on equitable grounds for both linguistic groups in social life as established in law, that is, in Acts of . In addition, section 122, sub-section 1, requires that in the organisation of administration, the objective shall be suitable territorial divisions, so that the Finnish- speaking and Swedish-speaking populations have an opportunity to receive services in their own language on equal terms. At the same time, under section 79 of the Constitution, the enacts all legislation in both Finnish and Swedish,3 and the Government issues its decrees in both national lan- guages as well. Th ese acts and decrees are published in both Finnish and Swedish in separate series of the Statutes of Finland. Th e norms

1 I wish to thank dr. Kristian Myntti and dr. Johan Boucht for comments to a draft of this article and professors Johanna Niemi, Niklas Bruun and Dan Frände of the University of for information concerning law studies at Helsinki and con- cerning legal literature published in Swedish in Finland as well as Mr. Henno Erikson Parks for the linguistic check-up. I am obviously alone responsible for the text. 2 While the total number of inhabitants in Finland is 5.2 million persons, the Swedish-speakers are only 290,000, that is, around 5 percent of the population. 3 As established in Section 51 of the Constitution of Finland with regard to the languages used in parliamentary work, “[t]he Finnish or Swedish languages are used in parliamentary work. Th e Government and the other authorities shall submit the documents necessary for a matter to be taken up for consideration in the Parliament both in Finnish and Swedish. Likewise, the parliamentary replies and communica- tions, the reports and statements of the Committees, as well as the written proposals of the Speaker’s Council, shall be written in Finnish and Swedish”. 102 markku suksi are equally authoritative in both languages. Government bills and reports and statements by the Committees of the Parliament also emerge in the two languages (although the Swedish version is, in most cases, a translation).4 In fact, Finnish and Swedish are identifi ed as the national in section 17, sub-section 1, of the Constitution, a characterisation that results in diff erent types of lin- guistic arrangements, some of which are based on a combination of the personal principle5 and territorial principle,6 and some on a functional autonomy of some sort in a manner that may result in organising, for instance, education along a notion of “separate but equal”. Th e legisla- tion passed and published in Finnish and Swedish is hence also imple- mented in one of the two languages, depending on the language of the party.7 Several pieces of law exist that implement the constitutional require- ment in section 17 of the Constitution. Th is legislation contains the Language Act (423/2003) and the Act on the Knowledge of Languages Required of Personnel in Public Bodies (424/2003), as well as a great number of substantive pieces of law, such as the Basic Education Act (628/1998), the Conscription Act (1438/2007), the Act on Courts of

4 However, court cases are not issued in two languages, but in the language in which the case was initiated. Hence decisions of the Supreme Court or Supreme Administrative Court are mainly in the , and only a small minority of them are in Swedish, probably even less than the share of the Swedish-speakers in the country would warrant, because for various reasons, Swedish-speakers or their legal counsel (which may be Finnish-speaking) may choose to use the Finnish language in the pro- ceedings or because the courts are not always catering for the linguistic rights of the parties and carry out the trial in the language of the party in the case that the language would be Swedish. See Report of the Government on the application of language legisla- tion 2009, pp. 53–59, at www.om.fi /en/Etusivu/1236880953561 visited May 18, 2010. Although a case is not handed down in two languages in its entirety, the two Supreme Court instances publish their case summaries in both Finnish and Swedish. 5 Th e personal principle means that an individual has a subjective right to use his or her language in dealings with authorities. 6 Th e territorial principle means that the country is divided into unilingually Finnish-speaking and unilingually Swedish-speaking municipalities and into munici- palities that are bilingual with either Finnish or Swedish as the language of the major- ity of the population. 7 In principle, the language of the party can be determined on the basis of the mother tongue and contact language that is registered on the basis of Section 13(1), number 20, of the Act on the Population Data System and the Certifi cate Services of the Centre of the Population Registry (661/2009). While this works well in some areas, such as tax administration (the taxation forms of are always mailed to the person in his or her mother tongue, Finnish or Swedish, wherever in Finland he or she is living), some other authorities, such as the police, the prosecution and courts are using the population registry much less frequently.