Economic Opportunities and the Protection of Minority Languages
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Julie Chi-hye Suk
In this Article, Professor Suk defends the moral legitimacy of liberal states’ legal protection of minority languages. Many opponents of minority language protection have argued or assumed that legal intervention denies individuals the right to choose the majority language and the economic opportunities often attached to the dominant language. This Article argues that such arguments overlook another category of goods that are necessary to individual autonomy: relational resources. Individuals have an interest in maintaining their ancestral languages because doing so is essential to maintaining one’s relationship to one’s family and community. The relational interest cannot easily be compared with economic opportunities, because these two dimensions of autonomy are incommensurable. As a result, a liberal state should avoid forcing its citizens to choose between these incommensurable goods. By adopting policies that protect minority languages, while also ensuring individuals’ access to economic and political participation in the majority language, a liberal state can manage and balance the conflict between these important competing aspects of autonomy.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Foreword
- Individuals' Interest in the Preservation of their Culture
- Banning Parties: Religious and Ethnic Partisanship in Multicultural Democracies
- On the Persistent Political Under-Representation of Muslims in India
- Economic Opportunities and the Protection of Minority Languages
- Multiculturalism and the Mass Media
- Regulating Modesty-Related Practices
- Is It Really so Benign? Gender Separation in Ultra Orthodox Bus Lines
- Law and Internal Cultural Conflicts
- Contextualizing Multiculturalism: A Three Dimensional Examination of Multicultural Claims
- Is Conditional Funding a Less Drastic Means?
- In Defense of Conditional Funding of Religious Schools
- On the Jehovah's Witnesses Cases, Balancing Tests, and Three Kinds of Multicultural Claims
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Foreword
- Individuals' Interest in the Preservation of their Culture
- Banning Parties: Religious and Ethnic Partisanship in Multicultural Democracies
- On the Persistent Political Under-Representation of Muslims in India
- Economic Opportunities and the Protection of Minority Languages
- Multiculturalism and the Mass Media
- Regulating Modesty-Related Practices
- Is It Really so Benign? Gender Separation in Ultra Orthodox Bus Lines
- Law and Internal Cultural Conflicts
- Contextualizing Multiculturalism: A Three Dimensional Examination of Multicultural Claims
- Is Conditional Funding a Less Drastic Means?
- In Defense of Conditional Funding of Religious Schools
- On the Jehovah's Witnesses Cases, Balancing Tests, and Three Kinds of Multicultural Claims
