Yesterday (or perhaps today depending on your time zone), was International Literacy Day.
I came across an instance of the crossover between literacy and law in this article published in Punch, the Nigerian newspaper, by Kaine Agary, who works to increase the level of legal literacy in society.
I found another perspective on literacy and law in the following TEDx UCLA talk by Dr Laura Bates, an English professor at Indiana State University, who has spent the past 25 years teaching the works of Shakespeare to prison inmates — many of them in solitary confinement.
“The results have been transformative: prisoners have been given the chance to experience formal education, often for the first time. And in coming to understand how Shakespeare’s depiction of violence resonates with people who have actually experienced it, Bates says she’s learned to look at his plays in a completely new way.”
From Words to Deeds: translation & the law 
Wow. Both of these discussions here are so powerful. Thank you for sharing!
And in a sort of aside, I am often reminded how lucky I am to be a legal translator—that is, a non-lawyer trained to read law. Contracts and clauses are so prevalent in our everyday lives; it’s a blessing to be able to understand and interpret the obscured language when necessary.
Thank you for your valuable comments Carolyn, and thanks for following the blog so faithfully! 🙂
This was a project in Canada linking literacy and law: http://plainlanguage.com/LawyersForLiteracy/index.html
Thanks for sharing this Cheryl.
Thank you so much for sharing this video!
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