How Much French Do They Speak Anyway? A Bilingualism Index for Supreme Court Justices, 1985-2013

Abstract

Mandatory bilingualism for Supreme Court judges tantalizes Canadian politics for at least ten years now. The advocates of judicial bilingualism have repeatedly tried (and failed) to enshrine into law the requirement for Supreme Court justices to be functionally bilingual, i.e. the ability to “read materials and understand oral argument without the need for translation or interpretation in French and English”. For them, integrating mandatory bilingualism as a legislative requirement in the appointment process is a panacea. Their opponents argue that language proficiency in French should not be a sine qua non condition for Supreme Court justiceship and that requiring it would prevent excellent candidates from being appointed. However, despite the fact that empirical statements abound on both sides, there is very little empirical evidence regarding the actual impact of unilingualism and bilingualism on Canadian judicial institutions and simply no evidence whatsoever about its impact on individual judges’ behavior. Building on our ongoing research on judicial bilingualism, in this paper we try to evaluate the level of bilingualism of individual justices. What our findings suggest is that the behavior of Francophone and Anglophone bilinguals is influenced by the linguistic competency of their colleagues. Our findings also suggest that some Anglophone justices that are deemed to be bilinguals do not behave very differently from their unilingual colleagues. In light of these results, we reassess the proposition of integrating mandatory bilingualism as a statutory prerequisite for future Supreme Court appointees and discuss some policy alternatives that could prove more efficient in moving the Court towards real institutional bilingualism.