To Örebro University

Both Finnish and Swedish are national languages in Finland. The background is that until 1809 Finland and Sweden were one country and Swedish was the official language. Between 1809 and 1917 Finland had autonomy as a part of Russia and during that period, the Finnish language became more powerful. In 1902 Finnish and Swedish became official languages. In 1917 Finland became independent and had its constitution in 1919, where both languages (Finnish and Swedish) were national languages. The status of the national languages was again confirmed in the reform of basic rights in 1995 like again in the current constitution from the year 2000. About 288 000 people have Swedish as their mother tongue in Finland, which means that over 5 % are Swedish speaking. According to the Constitution, the right of everyone to use his or her own language, either Finnish or Swedish, before courts of law and other authorities, and to receive official documents in that language, shall be guaranteed by an Act. The public authorities shall provide for the cultural and societal needs of the Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking populations of the country on an equal basis. The term “national” language has a symbolic value. The Constitution makes namely no difference between the majority and minority languages but is neutral. Finland is, therefore, a bilinguistic country where both official languages have an equal status despite of the fact Swedish is factually a minority language. This symbolic value is quite significant and strengthens the factual status of the Swedish language. The linguistic rights serve in this case also the minority rights. The status as a minority causes needs to protect the own language and identity intensively. Therefore, the linguistic rights and how they are protected do mirror how the minority rights are protected. Additionally, the status as a minority seem to affect in experiencing the importance of the linguistic rights too. In this article, the symbolic value of national language is discussed together with the question how the minority status affects linguistic rights´ and their significance. The geographical context is Finland and the culture geographical context is Finnish Swedes. 

Parties need to co-operate to resolve their dispute consensually. This duty has developed into a common European standard over the last two decades. The objective is to avoid any misuse of procedure. It is also about saving resources and especially about conflict resolution. By confirming a settlement, a dispute is solved not only juridically but also from the psychological and sociological perspective. When reaching a settlement, the parties can also affect the contents of the solution. To promote friendly settlements and ADR it is significant to reach equivalent effects through a settlement compared with a judgment. Even though a confirmed settlement is enforceable, there are some other effects which may be weaker when a confirmed settlement is compared with a judgment. For instance, it is disputed whether res judicata covers confirmed settlements in the same way as a judgment. Even though, the parties are not able to unilaterally enlarge the court’s powers as defined by law, it is important to recognize the value of allowing parties to reach a settlement that includes matters not strictly covered by the legal dispute before the court. It is the parties who should be satisfied with the result, not the court. Therefore, the court should confirm even settlements which are not only judicial but include other aspects too, like an apology. Even the correspondence with substantive law should be interpreted quite flexibly, to cover as many contracts as possible.