Public Notice Detail

Associate Justice Alan Page
St. Paul, MN
April 18, 2000

It is my pleasure to welcome you all this afternoon to our Court Interpreter Certification Ceremony.  First, I’d like to introduce a few of my colleagues and friends from the bench.

• Justice Paul Anderson - Member of Race Bias Task Force Implementation Committee and liaison to the Supreme Court Interpreter Advisory Committee.  Justice Anderson has played a vital role in moving our Court Interpreter Program forward.
• Justice Jim Gilbert
• Justice Russell Anderson - Member of Race Bias Task Force Implementation Committee
• Justice Joan Ericksen Lancaster
• Chief Judge Larry Cohen from Ramsey County
• Judge Salvador Rosas, also from Ramsey County - Member of Race Bias Task Force Implementation Committee

As you can imagine, this is a very important day for our 15 interpreters, but also for the entire court system.

The Supreme Court’s Race Bias Task Force report identified a problem our non-English-speaking neighbors have known for decades:  Justice must be understood, to be just.  When people come to court to resolve their disputes, their liberties and their livelihood are at stake, and these things are far too important to guess at, to approximate or to paraphrase. 

Combined with social and cultural differences between their home countries and the United States, experiences in our courtrooms can be downright scary.

But today we will recognize 15 people who have dedicated themselves to changing that.  These people will be an integral part of providing a system that increases our understanding of people’s needs, regardless of their language.

I can tell you this is no small task – for the interpreters, or the system as a whole.  Because the need for complete understanding is so great and the stakes so high, these court interpreters have trained for months and passed stringent requirements to qualify for certification.  And the judicial system – through the Race Bias Implementation Committee -- has been working since 1993 to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse society.

But there is much, much more to be done. 

What we do and see here today is another important step in a long journey.  To those interpreters being certified today, I commend you for joining us.  On behalf of the Supreme Court, I thank you for your dedication, your hard work and your commitment to making justice understood.

In closing, I’d like to again congratulate all of our new Certified Court Interpreters.  I’d also like to leave you with a quote from President John F. Kennedy:

“So, let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved.  And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”

Thank you.