American Justice System

Yngvesson studies court cases in two counties in Massachusetts---Essex and Franklin. The author focuses on the central role of the court clerks who determine the original disposition of the complaints that come from the citizen. The methodology of Yngvesson includes observation of "many months of complaint hearings" and interviews with "many citizen participants in the court process" (Yngvesson, 1993, xi). Along with this extensive fieldwork, the author also took part in the Amherst Seminar on Legal Ideology and the reflections of members of that seminar on her work, and participated in collaborative research effor

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protection or control" (Merry, 1990, 3). There are slight but important differences between the two authors with respect to their focuses on specific contents of the justice system. For example, Merry is concerned with the paradoxical effects of the ordinary citizen's seeking justice. She writes that Recourse to the courts for family and neighborhood problems . . . empowers plaintiffs with relation to neighbors and relatives, but at the same time it subjects them to the control of the courts. People who take personal problems to court become more dependent on the state to manage their private lives. Recourse to court strengthens the hand of the plaintiff against his or her neighbor, relative, or friend, but at the same time it leaves her dependent on the court for support (Merry, 1990, 2). Yngvesson is also aware of these paradoxical effects, but she seems to subsume that aspect in a greater concern with the larger cultural impact of legal complaints: My approach to complaining as the production of culture builds on work in legal anthropology during the past 20 years in which disputes have come to be seen less as problems in need of a solution than as mechanisms for negotiating and redefining normative order. This shift
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Approximate Word count = 2598
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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