Getting Justice and Getting Even – Legal Consciousness among Working–Class Americans

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Sally Engle Merry

Getting Justice and Getting Even – Legal Consciousness among Working–Class Americans

Sally Engle Merry

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English

Chicago University Press
15 May 1990

Sociology & anthropology; Law; Private & Civil law: general works

Series: Chicago Series in Law and Society

Ordinary Americans often bring family and neighborhood problems to court, seeking justice or revenge. The litigants in these local squabbles encounter law at its boundaries in the corridors of busy city courthouses, in the offices of court clerks, and in the church parlors used by mediation programs.

Getting Justice and Getting Even concerns the legal consciousness of working class Americans and their experiences with court and mediation. Following cases into and through the courts, Sally Engle Merry provides an ethnographic study of local law and of the people who use it in a New England city. The litigants, primarily white, native-born, and working class, go to court because as part of mainstream America they feel entitled to use its legal system. Although neither powerful nor highly educated, they expect the law's support when they face intolerable infringements of their rights, privacy, and safety. Yet as personal problems enter the legal system and move through mediation sessions, clerk's hearings, and prosecutor's conferences, the citizen plaintiff rapidly loses control of the process. Court officials and mediators interpret and characterize the meaning of these experiences, reframing and categorizing them in different discourses. Some plaintiffs yield to these interpretations, but others resist, struggling to assert their own version of the problem.

Ultimately, Merry exposes the paradox of legal entitlement. While going to court allows an individual to dominate domestic relationships, the litigant must increasingly yield control of the situation to the court that supplies that power.

By: Sally Engle Merry
Imprint: Chicago University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: 2nd ed.
Dimensions: Height: 232mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 352g
ISBN: 9780226520698
ISBN 10: 0226520692
Series: Chicago Series in Law and Society
Pages: 238
Publication Date: 15 May 1990
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Sally Engle Merry is professor of anthropology at Wellesley College.

Reviews for Getting Justice and Getting Even – Legal Consciousness among Working–Class Americans

.,. highlights diverse women writers, especially American ethnics who made significant contributions to the contemporary literary scenes, whose themes and fictional characters defy traditionally prescribed roles for women, and whose main characters appeared after 1945....Recommended. Undergraduate and public libraries. -Choice