By Lahiru S. Thilakarathna
Let us first look at what is meant by the term “to be literate” on any given subject. Literacy in a subject encompasses the ability to understand and critically evaluate information related to the topic, as well as the capacity to apply this knowledge in practical or relevant contexts.
As our subject of interest is public legal literacy at the grassroots level in Sri Lanka, it is important to clearly define what public legal literacy is.
Public legal literacy refers to the level of understanding and awareness that the general public has regarding the law, legal systems, and legal rights. It encompasses knowledge of basic legal principles, the rights and responsibilities under the law, and the ability to navigate the legal system. Furthermore, public legal literacy should enable individuals to recognise legal issues, understand their legal rights, and take appropriate action to resolve legal problems.
The next question is as to how to determine the status of public legal literacy in Sri Lanka and make conclusions as to its necessity and implications on society. One source is formed of expert opinions and calls for better legal literacy of citizens, based either on anecdotal experience or intuition. However, there are currently no systematic studies that assess the level of public legal literacy in Sri Lanka.
Thus, the question arises on what basis can legal literacy be determined. Moreover, there is no specific index to measure the legal literacy rate to date in the world, and inferences as to the same should be drawn from general legal indexes.
The Rule of Law index of the World Justice Project is relevant as it has a factor called “open government” under which it measures “the openness of government defined by the extent to which a government shares information, empowers people with tools to hold the government accountable, and fosters citizen participation in public policy deliberations”.
Although it does not refer to public legal literacy directly, it can be reasonably inferred that a higher score under this factor indicates or leads to a higher legal literacy rate. In 2023, Sri Lanka had a score of 0.51 out of 1 with the corresponding world rank of 67 out of 142 countries. Therefore, on the basis of this score, it can be asserted that Sri Lankan public literacy needs to be increased and strengthened.
Any type of literacy may be improved and strengthened by either formal or informal methods. In this context, formal methods refer to programs implemented by the state, and informal methods refer to civic or private sector-led programs.
In terms of the primary formal method, the current school syllabus covers law and related subjects such as democracy, human rights, governance, international relations from grade 6 to 11 under the subject titled Civic Education, which provides a comprehensive theoretical coverage.
Whatever is the method employed to improve legal literacy, it must address the real need of people to be legally literate; otherwise, legal literacy will be limited to a statistic measured at exams or surveys.
Why would an average person want to study any subject with the aim to apply it in daily life? The answer is that the utility of the application of the learned subject outweighs the opportunity cost of learning to apply it. Akin to the utility of application of financial literacy; the ability to grow and protect wealth, the application of legal literacy must have grassroots-level utility in daily life. Therefore, legal literacy programs should provide practical reasons for people to be intrinsically motivated to learn, practice, and participate in the rules of a nation.
These practical reasons can be discovered by exploring the reasons as to why people learn, apply, and follow rules in games. A game by design inextricably contains rules; otherwise, it is no longer considered a game but chaos. The reason to use games as opposed to any other phenomenon based on rules is that games most accurately reflect the state of affairs in the natural world and man-made societies.
Games are designed to produce zero-sum outcomes but under a rules-based order just like most interactions found in nature and society. This may be seen as a reductionist representation of society but in essence, people in society, as do in games, cooperate with each other to gain not out of pure altruism. The game for the purpose of representing a nation should be seen as a team game and not an individual game.
To understand the role of rules in games and society as at present, and thereby discover the practical reasons that would intrinsically motivate people to become legally literate, is best done through the lens of positivism.
Positivism is a school of jurisprudence that generally aims to provide a descriptive understanding of functions of rules rather than prescriptive guidelines. It presents rules as they are and not as they should be. However, it must be noted that normative directions or aspirations in any field or area of human conduct must not be dismissed but appreciated for their potential to develop and push the boundaries for the better.
Therefore, from the lens of positivism, we can hope to gain an objective assessment of the roles of rules and the practical reasons behind the need of people to learn how to apply them.
The natural state of human beings is to maximise self-interest, in economics called a rational agent, and therefore the people need rules to have a common understanding of how to behave in relation to players on the same team and the opposing team, and to achieve a final result without plunging into total chaos and anarchy.
According to Joseph Raz, people consider rules as authoritative only when they provide practical reasons to act in accordance with the rules. If rules enable people to cooperate with each other to win as individuals as well as a collective, then those rules will be “internalised” rather than be seen as externally enforced. HLA Hart provided that when rules are internalised, then people feel obliged to follow the rules rather than feel obligated to follow them.
Therefore, the core objective of any public legal education program should be to explain the reasons as to why learning rules is practical and advantageous to self-interest maximisation and incentives the application of rules in daily life.
We can teach all about the legal system, rights, obligations, the constitution, substantive and procedural laws, but the whole program will fail if it does not provide reasons and internalise an attitude that makes people feel obliged to apply the law in daily life.
It is the belief that effective legal literacy is achieved only if the citizens internalise and apply the rules of law rather than become another read and dead subject.
Lahiru S. Thilakarathna is an Attorney-at-Law who focuses on Public International Law. He can be reached at teandiplomacy@gmail.com.
Factum is an Asia-Pacific focused think tank on International Relations, Tech Cooperation, Strategic Communications, and Climate Outreach accessible via www.factum.lk.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the organization’s.
