Earlier this year, Irish rapper and political activist Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, in the rap trio Kneecap) faced charges of terrorism relating to the display of pro-Palestinian iconography. While the case was eventually thrown out, it shed light on an important issue affecting the fairness of trials involving indigenous peoples, both in and outside of Ireland. During the trial, Ó hAnnaidh indicated that he would be requesting an Irish language interpreter, a proposition that presents challenges in both legal and political contexts. In the jurisdiction of the U.K, where the case was to be tried, someone like Ó hAnnaidh’s ability to speak Irish in the court in any capacity without facing further prosecution dates back only to February 2024. Previously, speaking Gaeilge in British courts was still illegal, as per an archaic 1737 Act of Parliament. 

Given the already immense complexity of legal proceedings for native English speakers, it is evident that a fair and unbiased trial, something guaranteed by most western nations’ constitutions, is impossible if someone is not able to be tried in their native language. However, even today, those who seek to access this right are, like Mr. Ó hAnnaidh, faced with a long-list of hurdles preventing them from doing so. Each of these hurdles represents a convergence of potent societal forces that rear their heads in vastly different ways, depending on the nation they occur in. An analysis of these hurdles, as well as the effectiveness of the measures put in place by Governments aiming to alleviate them, reveals an injustice that rests all too easily in the hearts of our courtrooms.

Firstly, a universal challenge is presented by the massive shortage of interpreters, who need not only language interpretation skills, but also court-specific training. Revisiting the Ireland example, neither jurisdiction on the island has anywhere near a sufficient level of access to interpreters. In the Republic of Ireland, the right to speak Irish in the courts has been legally enshrined since the nation’s founding, and, on paper at least, Irish is given equal credence with English in dealings with the State. However, in practice, the necessity for an interpreter immediately puts Irish speakers on the backfoot. Unlike the UK, Ireland has no National Registrar of Public Service Interpreters, and so the appropriate support can take years to acquire. This waiting list prolongs a process that already causes anxiety and stress due to its lengthiness: Defendants, jurors, and and everyone else involved is kept away from their loved ones for longer, and the uncertainty of outcome hangs over their heads for longer than it has to, exacting a clear emotional toll. In the USA, the interpreter shortage is just as great, though its effects differ. For Indigenous peoples involved with immigration cases at the border with Mexico, people who often speak very little Spanish or English, an inability to find adequate interpretation means extended stays in detention facilities, longer backlogs, and an increased vulnerability to malicious prosecution.

Overall, an adequate amount of interpreters is crucial for speakers of indigenous to have any hope of a fair trial, and the solution is as simple as making this a priority for funding. In the USA, several initiatives are already being undertaken to amend the issue: At a federal level, the Federal DOJ & Agency Language Access Plans set out a clear blueprint for improving access to interpretation, both bilingually and trilingually (which is necessary in cases where those with limited English proficiency are also hard of hearing). At the state level, some states, such as Oregon, are organising wage subsidies and collectives for interpreters in order to fill in the gaps. In many cases, tele-interpretation is becoming increasingly common, a trend that would do well to catch on in places like Ireland. In New Zealand, we can already see the positive effect that these registrars and collectives can have on the situation: The Ministry of Justice runs an Interpreter Services Quality Framework, booking systems, and standards for court interpreters (including te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language). The Ministry also publishes annual reports on the matter, keeping the system quick and effective. This is not to say that New Zealand has no shortages or delays, but it serves as an excellent blueprint for other nations facing this issue.

During criminal proceedings in jurisdictions such as the United States, an additional layer of complexity and risk for Indigenous-language speakers arises from the discretionary power wielded by judges to decide whether an interpreter is necessary, and if so, when to provide one. In United States v. Black, the Tenth Circuit upheld a trial court’s refusal to appoint a Navajo interpreter for certain witnesses, based on the judge’s factual determination that they could respond in English. The outcome underscores how, even when statutory protections exist under the Court Interpreters Act, judges’ subjective judgments about linguistic ability can effectively deny access to culturally and linguistically appropriate interpretation. Similarly, in United States v. Osuna, appellate courts have remanded cases because trial courts failed to sufficiently inquire into whether language difficulties were impeding a defendant’s comprehension or participation, particularly when the individual speaks an Indigenous language but may also use some English. These discretionary decisions turn on whether the judge “perceives” a need, rather than on an objective metric of linguistic competence, or more importantly, on a functional assessment of whether the defendant or witnesses understand the legal process. Because courtroom interactions assume shared linguistic and cultural frames, this discretion can disadvantage speakers of Indigenous languages insofar as judges may underestimate or misunderstand the depth of a speaker’s language needs. Moreover, the lack of qualified, native-level interpreters for many Indigenous languages intensifies the problem. Even if a judge agrees an interpreter is needed, the scarcity of trained practitioners may delay appointment or force reliance on underqualified or relay interpreters, thereby undermining the accuracy of interpretation and the fairness of the trial. In short, judicial discretion, combined with interpreter scarcity and linguistic cultural misunderstandings, creates a structural bias that can cripple the promise of equal justice before the law.

The question raised by Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh’s insistence on an Irish-language interpreter in his trial is not merely a symbolic or political demand. It strikes at the heart of procedural fairness and substantive justice. Across different systems, in Ireland, the United States, and New Zealand, the legal right to interpretation for speakers of Indigenous languages is increasingly recognised on paper. However, recognition is not enough. Without sufficient numbers of qualified interpreters, transparent and proactive judicial inquiry, and safeguards against bias rooted in language and culture, these legal guarantees may remain hollow in practice. The discretionary power of judges, especially in contexts where they must assess the need for interpretation without clear guidance, introduces a source of subjective error that disproportionately harms Indigenous-language speakers. Governments must not only build interpreter capacity through training, certification, and funding, but also limit the potential for arbitrariness in judicial decision-making. True equality in the justice system requires that no person be disadvantaged because of the language they speak.

Sources:

Al Jazeera. “Indigenous Migrants Seeking US Asylum Struggle for Interpreters.” Al Jazeera, July 3, 2021.

Community Law. “Your Right to Speak Te Reo Māori in Court.” Community Law Manual. Accessed November 2025.

Irish Times. “Kneecap Case: A Woman Pointed to a Sniggering Moglai… as the Magistrate Asked If Anyone Knew an Irish Interpreter.” Irish Times, June 18, 2025.

Justice New Zealand, Ministry of Justice. Interpreter Services Quality Framework. Wellington: Ministry of Justice.

Law Justia. United States v. Anderson Black, 369 F.3d 1171 (10th Cir. 2004).

Law Resource. United States v. Osuna, 189 F.3d 1289 (10th Cir. 1999).

National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project (NIWAP). Department of Justice Language Access Plan. Washington, D.C., August 2023.

Pew Charitable Trusts, Stateline. “Indigenous Language Interpreters Unite to Fill Gaps.” Stateline, July 26, 2023.

Trinity College Dublin. “Kneecap Trial Spotlights Challenges for Irish Speakers in British and Irish Courts.” The Irish Times (Dublin), August 20, 2025.

U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois. “Language Access Plan.” Accessed 2025.

There exists a shockingly widely accepted narrative that the advent of equitable jurisprudence, and consequently the multilateral laws that characterise the international arena’s relative peace in the modern age, is due exclusively to the efforts of European colonisers. 

Often, opponents to decolonisation frame the effectiveness of western legal systems as an exclusive and undeniable benefit of European expansionism, categorically rejecting any justice not served by way of written records or court orders. However, in every corner of the world, colonised societies are fighting back against this narrative. Moana Jackson and John Higgins, lawyers from Aotearoa and Ireland respectively, have both analysed the oral-traditions and narrative jurisprudence of their respective nations, and the connections between the two otherwise distant lands reveal a unity that speaks to the often-questioned value of storytelling.

In With Stories, Anything is Possible, Moana Jackson explains that early Maori legal systems were based on a foundation of ethical values and passed down through oral storytelling, “It may take a while, but with stories anything is possible. They can even shift time — it simply takes belief.” This system contrasts directly with a centralised written authority: Nobody held a Bar license or a J.D., and yet justice was still served, in accordance with values such as tikanga and manaakitanga. One value of this system that proves particularly relevant to today’s world is that of respect for the Earth (Papatuanuku), “In particular they recognised the need to re-place Papatūānuku at the centre of all political and personal relationships. To rehonour the responsibilities of a mokopuna to the earth is especially important in the current crisis of climate change.” 

This legal system was naturally eroded by colonisation, and provides another argument as to how Maori could never have truly understood the terms of Te Tiriti o Waitangi; if somebody presented me with a legal agreement in the form of a song in a language I don’t speak, I’d be very surprised to discover my house taken from me the following morning. For Maori, not only was the English language completely alien, but the very format in which the agreement was made was also. Over the course of the next century and a half, English laws forbidding Te Reo Maori in schools effectively locked millions out of the memory of what came before. For the Maori children of these generations, their ability to remember their previous legal traditions was quite literally beaten out of them with sticks.

However, with the efforts of the likes of Jackson, not only is this system and its values being brought back into the public consciousness, but it may also provide an equitable path forward. It has long been acknowledged among Maori that, as Jackson puts it, “a different constitutional arrangement” is necessary for a truly just co-operative society. While the format of this arrangement will undoubtedly have to make some compromises with the written conventions of western legal institutions, the values of Maori legal traditions provide a unique blueprint for moving forward from the horrors of colonisation.

In the second article, Afterlives of the ‘Brehon laws’ (2024) by John Biggins, the focus shifts from Aotearoa’s Māori order to the Gaelic‑Irish legal traditions, known in shorthand as the Brehon laws. Biggins argues that far from being a dead relic, the Brehon laws had a surprising afterlife, interacting with colonial legal systems, being invoked in modern litigation, and quietly shaping conceptions of justice in Ireland beyond the moment of formal abolition. 

Biggins begins by sketching the origins of the Brehon laws: a corpus of legal texts compiled in the 7th‑ and 8th‑centuries, by Christian‑learned classes in Gaelic Ireland, weaving together poetry, myth, custom and law (senchas). He emphasises that these laws were not issued by a centralising royal authority, but rather administered via hereditary judges (brithemain) and poets (filid) within a clan‑based social order.  Biggins then describes how colonisation via the Anglo‑Norman and later English administrations attempted to replace these native laws with common law, yet the Brehon system proved “stubbornly resilient” in certain regions — persisting in Gaelic‑held territories, mixing with Anglo‑Norman legal practices, and even being invoked in legal argument into the 17th, 18th and even the 20th centuries. 

One of the key episodes Biggins highlights is the use of Brehon legal doctrine in fisheries litigation in the 1930s‑40s: in cases concerning public fishing rights, expert testimony relied on early Irish legal tracts, and in one 1933 judgement the Irish Supreme Court accepted that under Brehon law there was a public right to fish, and found the title of a private fishery defective. Biggins also explores the symbolic resurrection of Brehon forms in the republican era: the parallel “Dáil Courts” established by the Irish Republic in 1920 allowed, in theory, parties to plead Brehon law alongside common law, reflecting a desire to draw on indigenous legal traditions for legitimacy. Though in practice such pleas were rare, the gesture itself is meaningful. 

Overall, the two articles are remarkably similar, despite the distance between the two nations: Both systems were oral in nature, both were based upon a system of ethical or moral values, and, most importantly, both existed well before any British colonisation took place. In fact, both systems only met their end when actively extinguished by a foreign power. The differences between the two systems are also worth noting, though they are much less prominent. Where previous systems of Maori jurisprudence represented environmentally focussed pathways for systemic change, the Brehon laws were far more historical and prescriptive, and the latter show very little signs of revival, mainly due to the ultimate issue in Irish decolonisation being reunification rather than co-governance. 

Therefore, we arrive at the conclusion introduced earlier: the widely accepted narrative that European colonial expansion exclusively brought “progress” in legal and institutional form is deeply misleading. In fact, across very different geographies, from Aotearoa to Ireland, indigenous legal orders endured, resisted, influenced, and sometimes re‑emerged. Recognising these traditions is not mere historical trivia: it opens up the possibility of legal pluralism, of a future constitutionally and institutionally informed by more than one legal heritage, one that honours values of community, land, story, and relationality alongside the written, centralised conventions of the western legal tradition.

Sources:

https://historyireland.com/afterlives-of-the-brehon-laws/ 

https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/with-stories-anything-is-possible/