This volume deals with the manifold ways in which histories are debated and indeed historicity and historiography themselves are interrogated via the narrative modes of the truth commissions. It traces the various medial responses (memoirs, fiction, poetry, film, art) which have emerged in the wake of the truth commissions.

The 1990s and the 2000s saw a spate of so-called truth commissions across the Global South. From the inaugural truth commissions in post-juntas 1980s Latin America, to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the incoming post-apartheid government in South Africa and the twinned gacaca courts and National Unity and Reconciliation Commission in Rwanda and that in indigenous Australia, various truth commissions have sought to lay bare human rights abuses. The chapters in this volume explore how truth commissions crystallized a long tradition of dissenting and resisting cultures of memorialization in the public sphere across the Global South and provided a significant template for contemporary attempts to work through episodes of violence and oppression across the region. Drawing on studies from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Australia, this book illuminates the modes in which societies remember and negotiate with traumatic pasts.

This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of human rights, popular culture and art, literature, media, politics and history.

Table of Contents

1. Reassessing South African Truth and Reconciliation: John Kani’sMissing and Performative Demands for Justice 2. The Advancement of Truth Commissions on Past Affairs Along with Democratization in Korea: My Experiences as a Commissioner in Three Different Truth Commissions 3. Memories about Truth: Journalistic Narratives, ‘True Stories’ and the Clash of Memories in Brazil’s National Truth Commission 4.Ubu and the Truth Commission: The Multiple Contexts of the TRC and Ubu 5. Black Memories of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship: The Repression of Black Dances During the 1970s and the State of Rio Truth Commission 6. ‘That’s the Bad Past We Want to Forget’: Partial Truths, Reconciliation and Memory in Namibia’s Post-Apartheid Democracy 7. Notice Well:Memory and Reparation in the Brazilian Documentary Movies about the Dictatorship 8. Literature as Witness:Failure of a TRC Following the Mass Rapes in Bosnia and Herzegovina 9. The Practice of Public Apology:Australia Says Sorry to the Stolen Generations 10. The Gacaca Courts:Collective versus Personal Memory and Trauma of the Genocide in Rwanda. Postface: Truth Commissions and the Reinvention of the Past

Socio-legal studies have had an ambivalent relationship with the 'legal' - one of its defining aspects, but at the same time one that the discipline has sought to transcend or even leave behind. While socio-legal studies benefit hugely from the insights, methods and theories of other social science and humanity disciplines, the contributions to Exploring the 'Legal' in Socio-Legal Studies illustrate the value of a focus on the 'legal'. The chapters in this book combine traditional legal materials and analyses with other ways of engaging empirically with the 'legal'. They illustrate the rich potential of the 'legal' as a site both for theoretical and methodological reflection and for case study analysis. Taken as a whole, this volume demonstrates that methodological discussion is most helpful when rooted in empirical cases, and that the best case studies also help us to develop our methodologies. Bringing methodology and empirical analysis together offers an opportunity to reflect on socio-legal studies and develop the discipline in productive new directions.

This book looks at the way in which the 'call for justice' is portrayed through art and presents a wide range of texts from film to theatre to essays and novels to interrogate the law. 'Calls for justice' may have their positive connotations, but throughout history most have caused annoyance. Art is very well suited to deal with such annoyance, or to provoke it. This study shows how art operates as an interface, here, between two spheres: the larger realm of justice and the more specific system of law. This interface has a double potential. It can make law and justice affirm or productively disturb one another. Approaching issues of injustice that are felt globally, eight chapters focus on original works of art not dealt with before, including Milo Rau's The Congo Tribunal, Elfriede Jelinek's Ulrike Maria Stuart, Valeria Luiselli's Tell Me How It Ends and Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives. They demonstrate how through art's interface, impasses are addressed, new laws are made imaginable, the span of systems of laws is explored, and the differences in what people consider to be just are brought to light. The book considers the improvement of law and justice to be a global struggle and, whilst the issues dealt with are culture-specific, it argues that the logics introduced are applicable everywhere.

In this two-volume set, Larry D. Barnett delves into the macrosociological sources of law concerned with society-important social activities in a structurally complex, democratically governed nation. Barnett explores why, when, and where particular proscriptions and prescriptions of law on key social activities arise, persist, and change. The first volume, Societal Agents in Law: A Macrosociological Approach, puts relevant doctrines of law into a macrosociological framework, uses the findings of quantitative research to formulate theorems that identify the impact of several society-level agents on doctrines of law, and takes the reader through a number of case analyses. The second volume, Societal Agents in Law: Quantitative Research, reports original multivariate statistical studies of sociological determinants of law on specific types of key social activities. Taken together, the two volumes offer an alternative to the almost-total monopoly of theory and descriptive scholarship in the macrosociology of law, comparative law, and history of law, and underscore the value of a mixed empirical/theoretical approach.

This book is a critical examination of recently introduced individual accountability regimes that apply to the financial services industry in the UK (SMCR) and Australia (BEAR and the forthcoming FAR), together with a forthcoming new individual accountability regime ( in particular, SEAR) in Ireland. It provides a framework for analysing whether these regimes will achieve behavioural change in the financial services industry. This book argues that, whilst sanctioning individuals to deter future misconduct is an important part of any successful regulatory strategy, the focus should be on ensuring that individuals in the financial services industry internalise the norms of behaviour expected under the new regimes. In this regard, the analysis in this book is informed by criminological theory, regulatory theory and behavioural science. The work also argues for a "trajectory towards professionalisation" of financial services, and banking in particular, as an important means of positively influencing industry-wide norms of behaviour, which have a key influence on firms' and individuals' behaviours.

New and unremitting violence linked to state, inter-state, and private actors has precipitated a renewal of social movements, many of which act in concert with human rights ethos and legal conceptions. Yet, cultural studies has so far had little engagement or institutional connection with these movements. How can cultural studies as a progressive discipline think with, and make space for, rights-inflected legal and humanitarian practices? This book considers the ways in which cultural humanism and the critical approach to rights, and more broadly between culture and law, can be brought together to open a new intellectual space to allow cultural studies to better engage with the current challenges presented by social and political struggles worldwide. It lays out the central theses essential for constructing a critical view of human rights, and then advances a distinctive critical model of analysis that incorporates insights of postcolonial legal theorists and jurists from the Global South and important cultural theorists from the North, while rethinking law, rights, and social movements as something constituted by multiple legal modernities. Through case studies covering questions relating to sovereignty, citizenship, refugee displacement, human rights defenders, and gender and sexual rights, Law and Cultural Studies develops a means by which the practice of cultural studies can be reinvigorated around the legal spaces, institutions, and movements tied to human rights struggles. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural and media studies, critical legal studies, political theory, postcolonial studies, and human rights.

Rights, Regulation and the Technological Revolution confronts a central question facing modern government - how can regulators respond to both the challenges and opportunities presented by a technologically-driven society without sacrificing legitimacy for effectiveness, or weakening the essential conditions of a stable, aspirant moral community?
Analyzing developments across biotechnology, information and communications technology, nanotechnology and neurotechnology, the book explores the difficulties facing the public control of rapid technological change, focusing on the problems of regulatory effectiveness, connection, legitimacy and compliance. The book argues that as regulators struggle to find adequate frameworks to limit, license and support new technologies, they will increasingly rely on a technological approach to complement, enhance, and even replace traditional legal strategies.
The book breaks new ground by offering the first overarching commentary on the relationship between regulators, industry, and wider society as the new technologies of the twenty-first century achieve an ever-greater penetration in our daily lives.

''When the exception becomes the norm, the power of the sovereign is arbitrary, just as in pre-democratic times. But such arbitrariness is not random: it is applied primarily to certain categories of what used to be called ''the lower orders'' of society - the undocumented immigrants and the racially ''other,'' regardless of prior citizenship status. The very notion of citizen becomes vague and the status can be lost through a Kafkaesque process in which the state is unfathomable and often acts behind the scenes. This book edited by Devyani Prabhat brings together academics and lawyers working in the field of nationality and immigration laws, and shows how what has long been a feature of the labor market, namely, the precarious nature of jobs, has now become a feature of basic rights of ''belonging.'' Citizenship is precarious too. The chapters in this volume lead us straight to the question: What is the rule of law in such state of indistinction? Societies in decadence, like the current Western powers, entwine retrenchment with resentment, the exceptional with the normal, the in-group with the out-group. Devyani Prabhat and her colleagues analyze with great precision the alarming advance of legal imprecision, the interests that are vested in categorical confusion, and the erosion of basic rights in societies like the UK and the US - notably the right of persons to reside in peace and without fear.' - Juan Corradi, New York University, US This innovative book considers the evolution of the contemporary issues surrounding British citizenship, integrating the social aspects and ideas of identity and belonging alongside its legal elements. With contributions from renowned lawyers and academics, it challenges the view that there are immutable values and enduring rights associated with citizenship status. The book is organised into three thematic parts. Expert contributors trace the life cycle of the citizenship process, focusing on becoming a British citizen, retaining this citizenship with its associated rights, and the potential loss of citizenship owing to immigration controls. Through a critical examination of the concepts and content of British citizenship, the premise that citizenship retracts from full membership in society in times of turmoil is questioned. Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, Citizenship in Times of Turmoil? will be a key resource for scholars and students working within the fields of migration, citizenship and immigration law. Including details of legal practice, it will also be of benefit to practitioners.

Sociolinguistics and the Legal Process is an introduction to language, law and society for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students. Its central focus is the exploration of what sociolinguistic research can tell us about how language works and doesn't work in the legal process. Written for readers who may not have prior knowledge of sociolinguistics or the law, the book has an accessible style combined with discussion questions and exercises as well as topics for assignments, term papers, theses and dissertations. A wide range of legal contexts are investigated, including courtroom hearings, police interviews, lawyer interviews as well as small claims courts, mediation, youth justice conferencing and indigenous courts. The final chapter looks at how sociolinguists can contribute to the legal process: as expert witnesses, through legal education, and through investigating the role of language in the perpetuation of inequality in and through the legal process.

This collection adopts an interdisciplinary approach in order to understand the various factors at work in genocidal processes and their aftermath. The strong emphasis on legal norms, legal concepts and legal measures in other studies fails to consider further significant issues in relation to genocide. This book aims to redress this balance exploring social dynamics and human behaviour as well as the interplay of various psychological, political, sociological, anthropological and historical factors at work in genocidal processes.With contributions from top international scholars, this volume provides an integrated perspective on risk and resilience, acknowledging the importance of mitigating factors in understanding and preventing genocide. It explores a range of issues including the conceptual definition of genocide, the notion of intent, preventive measures, transitional justice, the importance of property, the role of memory, self or national interest and principles of social existence.Genocide, Risk and Resilience aims to cross conceptual, disciplinary and temporal boundaries and in doing so, provides rich insights for scholars from across political science, history, law, philosophy, anthropology and theology.

A Guide to Landlord and Tenant Law provides a strong foundation in commercial landlord and tenant, and housing law. The book is designed to provide a complete course text for both undergraduate and postgraduate students from surveying and real estate management backgrounds. This clear and accessible textbook aims to introduce the reader to the fundamentals of both residential and commercial landlord and tenant law by considering the nature of the tenancy and the relationship between the parties. It examines the main elements of the commercial lease including rent, repair, alienation, termination and statutory renewal. The main types of residential tenancy are also considered including: assured and assured shorthold tenancies, secure and Rent Act tenancies and long leasehold enfranchisement. The book aims to familiarise the reader with the contractual documentation as well as the common law and statutory codes which form the basis of landlord and tenant transactions. It contains useful features such as: extracts from the Model Commercial Lease key case summaries, a glossary and chapter summaries further reading lists In addition, students on the Legal Practice Course and Bar Professional Training Course will find this to be a useful supplementary resource as will professional surveyors and lawyers looking for a refresher on the latest landlord and tenant law.

Within the European Union, direct taxation is an area which often provokes controversy due to tensions between the tax sovereignty of the individual Member States and the desire for an integrated internal market. This book offers a critical review of the legislative and case-law developments in this area at the EU level, and reviews the European Commission's proposed solutions in light of their concerns regarding the proper functioning of the EU's internal market. Luca Cerioni set out a series of benchmarks determined from the objectives expressed by the European Commission, including: the elimination of double taxation and double non-taxation; the simplification of cross-border tax compliance; the reduction of abusive forum-shopping practices and general aggressive tax planning strategies; legal certainty for all businesses and individuals carrying on activities and receiving income in more than one EU Member State. Cerioni uses these benchmarks to ask which Directives and/or rulings have left legal uncertainty, and which have ended up creating or increasing the scope for aggressive tax planning. The book puts forward a comprehensive solution for a new optimal regime relating to tax residence, which would contribute to the EU project to the mutual benefit of Member States and taxpayers. As a thorough and critical discussion of EU tax rules in force, and of the European Court's case law in direct taxation, this book will be of great use to academic researchers and students of EU law, tax practitioners, and policy-makers at the EU and national level.

The orthodox view is that rights complement democracy. This book critically examines this view in the context of EU fundamental rights, specifically in situations where EU law requires member states to respect EU fundamental rights. It first sets out a legal theoretical account of how human rights can complement democracy. It argues that they can do so only if they are understood as both the conditions for the democratic process, and the outcome of such a democratic process. In light of this legal theoretical account of human rights, this book examines the demands which the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) imposes on the national orders in respect of EU fundamental rights. The conclusion reached is that the demands which EU fundamental rights impose on national legal orders entail a cost for the democratic legitimacy of those legal orders. Ultimately, accepting the demands of the CJEU in respect of EU fundamental rights may require the national legal order to abandon its commitment to protecting the human rights which are the foundation of the national legal order's very legitimacy.

Although scholars have shown longstanding interest in the boundaries of interpretation of the right not to be subjected to torture and other prohibited harm, the existing body of work does not sufficiently reflect the significance of the interpretive scope of degrading treatment. This book argues that the degrading treatment element of the right is a crucial site of analysis, in itself and for understanding the parameters of the right as a whole. It addresses how, methodologically, the scope of meaning and application of the right not to be subjected to degrading treatment should best be identified and considers the implications thereof. It systematically examines the diverse aspects of degrading treatment's scope, from foundations of legal interpretation to the drivers of humiliation. It draws on wide-ranging literature and extensive analysis of more than 1,500 judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, which has pioneered the right's interpretive growth. The book aims to explore how the interpretive possibilities, and limits, of the right not to be subjected to degrading treatment turn upon the axes of human dignity and state responsibility, and aims to show how this right's protection can be achieved as well as limited through processes of interpretation. Dignity, Degrading Treatment and Torture in Human Rights Law provides interpreters with analytical tools to advance the application of the right not to be subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in international, regional and domestic human rights law. It will appeal to all who have an interest in understanding the right's meaning, development, and potential scope of application, as well as those with an interest in methodologies of human rights interpretation.

..".the ethnographies...are rich, nuanced and highly readable." . Anthropological Notebooks

Disorder and instability are matters of continuing public concern. Terrorism, as a threat to global order, has been added to preoccupations with political unrest, deviance and crime. Such considerations have prompted the return to the classic anthropological issues of order and disorder. Examining order within the political and legal spheres and in contrasting local settings, the papers in this volume highlight its complex and contested nature. Elaborate displays of order seem necessary to legitimate the institutionalization of violence by military and legal establishments, yet violent behaviour can be incorporated into the social order by the development of boundaries, rituals and established processes of conflict resolution. Order is said to depend upon justice, yet injustice legitimates disruptive protest. Case studies from Siberia, India, Indonesia, Tibet, West Africa, Morocco and the Ottoman Empire show that local responses are often inconsistent in their valorization, acceptance and condemnation of disorder.

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is head of the project group 'Legal Pluralism' at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology at Halle, Germany. She is Professor of Anthropology of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Honorary Professor at the universities of Leipzig and Halle. Her research focuses on legal pluralism, disputing, decentralization, social security and natural resources in Indonesia and the Netherlands. Publications include Changing Properties of Property, co-edited with Franz von Benda-Beckmann and Melanie Wiber (Berghahn 2006).

Fernanda Pirie is Lecturer in Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. She has carried out research into conflict and its resolution in both Ladakh and among the nomads of Amdo in eastern Tibet. Her writings focus on order and disorder and the relations between law and religion. She is the author of the forthcoming Peace and conflict in Ladakh: the construction of a fragile web of order (Brill 2006)."

Why do international policing missions often fail to achieve their mandate? Why do United Nations Police officers struggle when serving in foreign peacekeeping missions? United Nations International Police Officers in Peacekeeping Missions: A Phenomenological Exploration of Complex Acculturation unravels these problems to find a causal thread: When working in hyper-diverse organizations such as the United Nations Police, United Nations police officers must grapple with adjusting to a kaleidoscope of different and competing cultures simultaneously-an issue the author identifies as complex acculturation. In this introduction to the novel concept of complex acculturation, Michael Sanchez explores the reasons behind the chronic performance troubles of the United Nations Police, and explains how the very fabric of the organization contributes to its ineffectiveness. While previous research has focused on private sector expatriate workers' challenges when adapting to a single new culture, this timely book describes a previously unstudied phenomenon and applies this knowledge to help businesses, governments, organizations, and citizens navigate the increasingly diverse workplace of the future. This book lays the foundation for a new area of study and provides a forward-thinking perspective that will interest multinational companies, police agencies, international relations organizations, prospective expatriate workers, and academics alike.

Modern Employment Law covers all aspects relating to the employment relationship between employer and employee at both individual and collective levels. All chapters are absorbing and exact, with nuanced topics such as unfair dismissal, discrimination and trade union law being explored from several different angles. Pedagogical features such as Thinking points and Further reading sections enable students to consolidate and extend their knowledge. Though primarily aimed at LLB students, this book offers a wide-ranging, accurate, authoritative, contemporary and readable guide to modern employment law for all students of the subject, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Although a collaborative effort, each author focused on specific areas of employment law. Ann Lyon examined the statutory rights of employees including topics such as redundancy, unfair dismissal and discrimination and equal pay issues. Charles Barrow had primary responsibility for the introduction, the majority of the contract of employment chapters and the collective aspects of employment law.

The capacity to abuse, or in general affect the enjoyment of human, labour and environmental rights has risen with the increased social and economic power that multinational companies wield in the global economy. At the same time, it appears that it is difficult to regulate the activities of multinational companies in such a way that they conform to international human, labour and environmental rights standards. This has partially to do with the organization of companies into groups of separate legal persons, incorporated in different states, as well as with the complexity of the corporate supply chain. Absent a business and human rights treaty, a more coherent legal and policy approach is required. Faced with the challenge of how to effectively access the right to remedy in the European Union for human rights abuses committed by EU companies in non-EU states, a diverse research consortium of academic and legal institutions was formed. The consortium, coordinated by the Globernance Institute for Democratic Governance, became the recipient of a 2013 Civil Justice Action Grant from the European Commission Directorate General for Justice. A mandate was thus issued for research, training and dissemination so as to bring visibility to the challenge posed and moreover, to provide some solutions for the removal of barriers to judicial and non-judicial remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states. The project commenced in September 2014 and over the course of two years the consortium conducted research along four specific lines in parallel with various training sessions across EU Member States. The research conducted focused primarily on judicial remedies, both jurisdictional barriers and applicable law barriers; non-judicial remedies, both to company-based grievance. The results of this research endeavour make up the content of this report whose aim is to provide a scholarly foundation for policy proposals by identifying specific challenges relevant to access to justice in the European Union and to provide recommendations on how to remove legal and practical barriers so as to provide access to remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states.

Each society that consumes alcohol has its own unique drinking culture, and each society deals with the drunken products of that culture in particular ways. As Mark D. West shows in Drunk Japan, the distinctive features of Japanese drinking culture and its intoxication-related laws are not simply interesting in and of themselves, but offer a unique window into Japanese society more broadly. Drawing upon close readings of over 5,000 published Japanese court opinions on drunkenness-related cases, he provides a rich description of Japanese alcohol consumption, drinking culture, and intoxication. West reveals that the opinions not only show patterns in what, where, and why people drink in Japan, but they also focus to a surprising extent on characteristics (including occupation, wealth, gender, and education) of individual litigants. By examining the consistencies and contradictions that emerge from the cases, West finds that, at its most extreme, the Japanese legal system is hyper-individualized. Focusing on individual people sometimes leads courts to ignore forensic evidence, to rely on post-arrest drinking tests, and to calculate prison sentences based on factors such as a mother's promise to help her adult child abstain. Cumulatively, the colorful and often tragic cases West uses not only illuminate the complexity of the culture, but they also reveal an entirely new vision of Japanese law and a comprehensive picture of alcohol use in Japanese society writ large.

This book opens up a range of important perspectives on law and violence by considering the ways in which their relationship is formulated in literature, television and film. Employing critical legal theory to address the relationship between crime fiction, law and justice, it considers a range of topics, including: the relationship between crime fiction, legal reasoning and critique; questions surrounding the relationship between law and justice; gender issues; the legal, political and social impacts of fictional representations of crime and justice; post-colonial perspectives on crime fiction; as well as the impact of law itself on the crime fiction's development. Introducing a new sub-field of legal and literary research, this book will be of enormous interest to scholars in critical, cultural and socio-legal studies, as well as to others in criminology, as well as in literature.

Can there be such a thing as a European sociology of law? The uncertainties which arise when attempting to answer that straightforward question are the subject of this book, which also overlaps into comparative law, legal history, and legal philosophy. The richness of approaches reflected in the essays (including comparisons with the US) makes this volume a courageous attempt to show the present state of socio- legal studies in Europe and map directions for its future development. Certainly we already know something about the existence of differences in the use and meaning of law within and between the nation states and groups that make up the European Union. They concern the role of judges and lawyers, the use of courts, patterns of delay, contrasts in penal 'sensibilities', or the meanings of underlying legal and social concepts. Still, similarities in 'legal culture' are at least as remarkable in societies at roughly similar levels of political and economic development. The volume should serve as a needed stimulus to a research agenda aimed at uncovering commonalities and divergences in European ways of approaching the law.

This book explains the challenge of constitutional pluralism and its importance, showing its theoretical and practical relevance, and giving a sense of why the existing scholarship on the matter is unsatisfactory. The work explores how legal practitioners and theorists have faced the challenge of a society living under two constitutions at the same time. This comes as the European Union, which legally and politically integrates Europe and seems to challenge the view that no State can simultaneously abide by both the venerable national constitutions and the ever-developing EU constitutional law, is increasingly torn between calls for closer integration to face collective challenges and mounting Euroscepticism and nationalism. This work employs a strongly pluralist perspective and a comparative methodology, and looks at constitutional crises outside the EU to ground the claim that pluralism and conflicts are essential elements of modern constitutions. It shows how the challenge of constitutional pluralism depends on a mistaken interpretation of positivist theory and how the latter, reinterpreted in a manner close to legal realism, has the resources to explain pluralism. Finally, the book addresses the issue of constitutional conflicts within the EU: it examines in detail recent cases of open disobedience to EU law by national courts and distinguishes physiological conflict from constitutional pathology. This work will be of particular interest to students and academics in Law and Political Science. It will also be compelling reading for scholars in general jurisprudence, EU law, constitutional and comparative constitutional law, and the history of European integration.

Originally published in 1981 Law, State and Society confronts many of the most important issues within the developing field of law and society. The essays cover the key political debates and the subject of the sociology of law through two key debates, the first tackling the wider theoretical and political system, while the other essays are concerned with more concrete aspects of both the political and social face of law. Together, the essays show how crucial the potential is that exists for a considerable extension and integration of work that focuses explicitly on empirical problems, yet is at the same time more conscious of the theoretical issues that underpin the effectivity of law.

Democracy and the rule of law are commonly represented as complementary and indispensable components of the modern democratic state. Whatever the truth of this formulation, it conceals the competing claims of electoral and legal accountability that are the subject of this volume. Political, legal and social theorists have long debated these contending claims. Recent socio-legal scholarship has shed empirical light on the debate. Accordingly, this volume brings together some of the landmarks of the relevant theory, including the work of such scholars as H.L.A. Hart, Lon L. Fuller and Philip Selznick and incorporates current socio-legal scholarship by such leading figures as Malcolm Feeley, Robert Kagan, Michael McCann and David Nelken.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"Oscar G. Chase studies the American legal system in the manner of an anthropologist. By comparing American 'dispute ways' with those of other systems, including some commonly believed to be more 'primitive, ' he finds interesting similarities that challenge the premise that we live in a society regulated by a rational and just 'rule of law.'"
--"New York Law Journal"

"A witty and engaging endeavor. . . . A good contribution to our professional knowledge, and it is a must reading."
--"Law and Politics Book Review"

"After reading Law, Culture, and Ritual, no one could ever again think that our legal proceedings are nothing more than an efficient method of discovering truth and applying law. Oscar Chase effectively uses a comparative approach to help us to step back from our legal practices and see just how steeped in myths, rituals and traditions they are. Scholars will want to read this book for its contribution to comparative law, but everyone interested in American culture should read this book. Chase shows us that there is no separating law from culture: each informs and maintains the other. Law, Culture, and Ritual is a major step forward in the rapidly expanding field of the cultural study of law."
--Paul Kahn, author of "The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship"

"Having allowed ourselves to be convinced (wrongly) that we are the most litigious people in the world, Americans have become obsessed with finding (quick) cures. Oscar Chase's book sounds a salutary warning. By presenting striking comparative examples that shatter our parochialism, he forces us to examine the cultural roots ofdispute processes."
--Richard Abel, Connell Professor of Law, UCLA Law School

aLaw, Culture, and Ritual is a brave, wide-ranging book, deserving to generate discussion in a number of important directions.a
--"Civil Justice Quarterly"

Disputing systems are products of the societies in which they operate - they originate and mutate in response to disputes that are particular to specific social, cultural, and political contexts. Disputing procedures, therefore, are an important medium through which fundamental beliefs, values, and symbols of culture are communicated, preserved, and sometimes altered. In Law, Culture, and Ritual, Oscar G. Chase uses interdisciplinary scholarship to examine the cultural contexts of legal institutions, and presents several case studies to demonstrate that the processes used for resolving disputes have a cultural origin and impact.

Ranging from the dispute resolution practices of the Azande, a technologically simple, small-scale African society, to the rise of discretionary authority in civil litigation in America, Chase challenges the claims of some scholars that official dispute systems are more reflective of the interests and preferences of elite professionals than of the cultures in which they are embedded.