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There is an interesting question on the Law stack exchange: "If Congress [of the United States of America] passed a bill written in Spanish, would it be valid?" (the answer appears to be 'yes, but it would cause problems').

Presumably, there is also no general prohibition on a state of the USA from making a law in a language other than English - has any state ever done so?

Rick Smith
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Neil Tarrant
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1 Answers1

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Louisiana's civil code was originally (before statehood) written in French and translated into English. Even after statehood, however, the code was bilingual for several decades:

The first Louisiana civil code, Digeste de la Loi Civile, was written in French by attorneys James Brown, Louis Moreau-Lislet, and Edward Livingston and subsequently translated into English as The Digest of the Civil Laws now in Force in the Territory of Orleans, or more commonly the Digest of 1808. The main drafter Louis Moreau-Lislet was a French colonial who originally hailed from Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti) but obtained his law degree in Paris just before the French Revolution of 1789.[15] Enacted on March 31, 1808, the Digest proved problematic when in 1817 the Louisiana Supreme Court, composed of Pierre Derbigny, George Mathews (Chief Justice), and François Xavier Martin, found in Cottin v. Cottin that the Spanish law in force prior to the Digest’s enactment had not been repealed and was therefore still in effect insofar as it did not contradict the Digest.[16] This provoked a legislative response by the General Assembly who tasked Justice Derbigny and attorneys Moreau-Lislet and Livingston with drafting a new, fuller code written in French and English and which formally repealed prior existing law. This code, the Civil Code of 1825, was enacted on April 12, 1824.

For many years legal practitioners in the state made great effort to ensure that both versions agreed. Despite those efforts some clauses were found only in one version or the other. Due to modern legislative enactments which repeal and reenact Louisiana's civil code articles as any other collection of statutes, the differences between the original French and the English translation are now primarily of historical interest.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Louisiana

phoog
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    Similarly for New Mexico - see http://www.languagepolicy.net/archives/nm-con.htm#:~:text=On%20January%206%2C%201912%2C%20President,equal%20to%20the%20English%20language. – Jon Custer May 13 '22 at 20:35
  • What about Hawaii? Not sure how to look that up, but I'd imagine some law was written in Hawaiian before it was standardized to English? – Darrel Hoffman May 13 '22 at 20:50
  • @DarrelHoffman excellent question. A quick search turned up https://law-hawaii.libguides.com/hawaiilegalhistory, which implies that Hawaiian law was first written down in English, although there was a well developed body of law before it was written. – phoog May 13 '22 at 21:06
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    I did find some hints of early Hawaiian law being written in Hawaiian, but it was before it became a US territory, let alone a state, so not sure if it qualifies? – Darrel Hoffman May 13 '22 at 21:09
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    @DarrelHoffman then you could argue much of the US based on any written Indian law, so probably doesn’t count. – Tim May 13 '22 at 21:59
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    @Tim but no US state based its legal system on Indian law, at least not in any way close to the degree to which Hawaii explicitly retained Hawaiian law as an exception when it adopted English common law. – phoog May 14 '22 at 04:29
  • The US territory of Puerto Rico, which is quite possibly destined for statehood, and has a population larger than 21 US states, has its entire legal system running in Spanish – T.E.D. May 14 '22 at 20:05
  • Unlike most countries, the US does not enshrine the English language as the official language in the Constitution. So there's nothing to prevent any state or the federal government from writing any law in another language. Correct me if I'm wrong. I've never read the US Constitution but I read that somewhere. – Roslan Amir May 15 '22 at 03:12
  • @RoslanAmir your comment is correct in that the US does not specify an official language in its constitution (nor in any other law). I am skeptical of the implied claim that most countries specify an official language in their constitutions, however; I just checked both the French constitution and the German Grundgesetz, and neither document seems to do so. – phoog May 15 '22 at 07:57
  • @phoog You referrred to countries with languages that bear their names. Similarly with the UK. Check Canada, or another country outside Europe, for example, Brazil or Argentina. – Roslan Amir May 16 '22 at 04:03
  • @RoslanAmir Thanks for those examples. The UK's constitution is not found in a single document, so any legislation about language is necessarily statutory (and I note that the language requirement for immigration may be satisfied by demonstrating proficiency in either English or Welsh). Canada of course has the presence of a significant French-speaking population to thank for any explicit provision for official languages. I don't see any mention of official language in Argentina's constitution. Whether or not "most" countries specify an official language, it's certainly not unusual not to. – phoog May 16 '22 at 09:41
  • @T.E.D. Yes, that came up recently in a Law.SE question. But Puerto Rico is not a state yet, so doesn't qualify for this question. Similarly, the people of Guam and American Samoa both commonly use a language other than English, though they're less likely to become states any time soon. – Darrel Hoffman May 16 '22 at 13:21
  • @DarrelHoffman - That's why I didn't make an answer of it. However, not a lot of people think about US territories, particularly ones that large, so it could be that PR does in fact address what the poster wanted to be asking about. – T.E.D. May 16 '22 at 14:06