The Politics Of Informal Justice The American Experience

The Politics of Informal Justice

Suppose you have a dispute with your neighbour, and wish to secure redress for losses incurred. How might the issue be resolved? Is it worth the cost and time delay to take the issue to court? Or is there some other approach? Over the past few decades a range of alternative, dispute resolution programmes have emerged to settle conflicts informally, outside the courtroom. Drawing on real life experiences of community mediation practices in British Columbia, Canada, the author explores informal justice as an event rendered possible by the fragmentation of justice under postmodern conditions. He develops some of Foucault's ideas on governmentality to erect an analytical framework that does not view community mediation as necessarily empowering, or an inevitable expansion of state control. The analysis identifies how one might engage with current versions of community justice and yet avoid the political apathy that too often accompanies such criticism.

This title was first published in 2002: This volume explores conceptual debates and provides contemporary research in the field of informal criminal justice, including chapters on paramilitary "punishment" and post-cease-fire restorative justice schemes in Northern Ireland, post-apartheid vigilantism in South Africa, and informal crime management in England.

This new edition considers a wide range of materials dealing with dispute processes and current debates on civil justice.

This wide-ranging study considers the primary forms of decision-making - negotiation, mediation, and umpiring - in the context of rapidly changing discourses and practices of civil justice across many jurisdictions. Much contemporary discussion in this field, and associated projects of institutional design, are taking place under the wide ranging but imprecise label of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). If a common linking theme is sought, the authors argue that this must lie in a general shift of priorities as between judgement and settlement in ideological terms. This new edition brings together and analyses a wide range of materials dealing with dispute processes and the current debates on civil justice. With the help of a selection of texts beyond those ordinarily found in the emerging alternative dispute resolution literature it provides a broad, comparative perspective on modes of handling civil disputes, with the principal focus on the central processes of negotiation and mediation.

" . . . a distinct, broad, but compelling framework for examining a variety of laws and social policies." —Legal Studies Forum " . . . a very rich volume that has something to offer to many different tastes . . . an excellent companion to the main textbook in a large undergraduate law-and-society course." —Contemporary Sociology No issue has captured the imagination of social scientists and legal scholars more consistently than the creation of laws. The political implications of the study of law and society often create ideological diatribes with little attention to empirical detail. In this book, legal scholars, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists join in an attempt to develop and refine a structural theory of law.

Traditional ideas of mediator neutrality and impartiality have come under increasing attack in recent decades. There is, however, a lack of consensus on what should replace them. Mediation Ethics offers a response to this question, developing a new theory of mediation that emphasises its nature as a relational process.

Producing Legality provides a window into the official construction of socialist legality in Cuba and the dissemination of this legal consciousness throughout the country. It links abstract theories of lawmaking and the state with the specific dilemmas confronting individual policymakers to detail the inner workings of the Cuban legal order.