Law at Work

The studies in this volume use ethnographic, ethnomethodological, and sociolinguistic research to demonstrate how legal agents conduct their practices and exercise their authority in relation to non-expert participants and broader publics. Instead of treating law as a body of doctrines, or law and society as a relationship between legal institutions and an external society, the studies in this volume closely examine law at work: specific legal practices and social interactions produced in national and international settings. These settings include courtrooms and other tribunals, consultations between lawyers and clients, and media forums in which government officials address international law. Because law is a public institution, and legal actions are publicly accountable, technical law must interface with non-expert members of the public. The embodied actions and interactions that comprise the interface between professional and lay participants in legal settings therefore must do justice to legal traditions and statutory obligations while also contending with mundane interactional routines, ordinary reasoning, and popular expectations. Specific chapters examine topics such as family disputes in a system of Sharia Law; rhetorical contestations about possible violations of international law during a violent conflict in the Middle-East; the transformation of a courtroom hearing brought about by the virtual presence of remote witnesses relayed through a video link; the practices through which written records are used to mediate and leverage a witness's testimony; and the discursive and interactional practices through which authorized parties use legal categories to problems with individual conduct. Each chapter shows that it makes a profound difference to the way we understand the law when we examine its meaning and application in practice.

Auteur

Baudouin Dupret is Research Director at French National Centre for Scientific Research. Michael Lynch is a Professor of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University. Tim Berard is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Kent State University.

Contenu

Introduction: Law at Work Baudouin Dupret, Michael Lynch, and Tim Berard Section I. Practical Action, Situated Interaction, and the Salience of Law The Editors Chapter One: The Practical Grammar of Law and Its Relation to Time Baudouin Dupret and Jean-Noël Ferrie Chapter Two: Aspiring Magistrates: Entry Exams and General Traineeship at the Court of Lecce Luisa Zappulli and Karen Latricia Hough Chapter Three: Practical Solutions: Praxiologial Analysis of Judgments in Civil Hearings Pedtro Heitor Barros Geraldo Section II. Practical Pedagogies in the Performance of Legal Activities The Editors Chapter Four: Hearing Clients' Talk as Lawyers' Work: The Case of Public Legal Consultation Conference Shiro Kashimura Chapter Five: Producing Records of Testimony: Some Competent Legal Methods for Incompetent Trials Kenneth Liberman Section III. Speech, Text, and Technology in Testimony The Editors Chapter Six: Reporting Talk When Testifying: Intertextuality, Consistency and Transformation in Witnesses Use of Direct Reported Speech Renata Galatolo Chapter Seven: Turning a Witness: The Textual and Interactional Production of a Statement in Adversarial Testimony Michael Lynch Chapter Eight : "Is there someone in my videoconference room?" Managing Remote Witnesses in Distributed Courtrooms Christian Licoppe and Laurence Dumoulin Section IV. Deviance, Membership Categories, and Legalities The Editors Chapter Nine: Hate Crimes, Labels, and Accounts: Pragmatic Reflections on U.S. Hate Crimes Tim Berard Chapter Ten: Descriptions of Deviance: Making the Case for Professional Help Stephen Hester and Sally Hester Chapter Eleven: Discursive Cartographies, Moral Practices: International Law and the Gaza War Lena Jayyusi