El lenguaje de los jueces en el Distrito Judicial de Lima Sur: Una investigación exploratoria sobre el lenguaje en procesos judiciales de familia

This paper gives the results of the research conducted at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP) entitled «The language of the judges and the right of access to justice for persons in vulnerable situations. Pilot project». This research project aimed to explore the current state of judicial language written in family court proceedings and alternatives to improve their understanding. According to our hypothesis , the clarity of judgments in family proceedings involving people in a vulnerable situation, depends not only on the texts are drafted with syntactically and orthographically correct language, but other factors relating to the situation specific language of the target group of judicial decisions. The fieldwork of the research project was conducted in the Southern Judicial District of Lima. In this judicial district we conducted interviews with a group of judges and organized a workshop and reading comprehension test of judgments with a group of women belonging to a social organization. The results show a part that judges interviewed have severe difficulties to write clearly judgments that are directed to the citizens of vulnerable populations. Furthermore, it was found that test participants understanding of court rulings women do not understand the technical language of judgments and there is ample scope for simplifying and improving the texts. The research results have been organized into three sections. In the first one we present the theoretical framework of the research: the relationship between law and language, the concept of judicial language and the constitutional status of the right to language comprehension of judges. In the second section the place, purpose, method, results and conclusions of the fieldwork is exposed. Finally, in the third section, the main trends that show international experiences to address the situation.