"Getting Justice and Getting Even"
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Sally Engle Merry reports in her book Getting Justice and Getting Even on an ethnographic study of a class of people who have taken their problems to court. The author states that the reason for the book is to discuss people who take their personal problems to court and to discuss the legal consciousness that causes them to do so. The setting for the study is eastern Massachusetts in the early 1980s, and the people are primarily white working-class Americans, largely but not entirely women. These are people who have decided that the legal system has something to offer them. They have taken the initiative to bring their problem to court. Most of the cases are from the lower criminal courts, some from the juvenile courts, and others from the small-claims courts. The legal services involved are generally free to the public. The author states that she has used an ethnographic approach to explore the legal consciousness of these plaintiffs and to observe and report on the way the different parties, the mediators, and the court officials talk about law, rights, property problems and cases. The methodology undertaken was observation and interview, though the emphasis is on observation. Merry stats that she found unraveling the histories and settings of the conflicts involved a complex task, and in order to accomplish her task she has gathered information from a variety of sources, cross-checking to determine accuracy. The parties themselves are attempting to have a confl
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ghtest provocation. She finds indeed that the response these people have to the courts is rooted in deep-seated cultural traditions of American society, including such things as individualism, equality, faith in the law, and the search for freedom from the control of neighbors and local leaders.
The book is written in a serious and professional manner but is not overly burdened with difficult terminology or esoteric methods of study and analysis. Instead, the book is presented as a series of histories that are then analyzed and incorporated into the overall picture that emerges in the course of the study. Each case is given its due just as the author would expect--makes clear that she does expect--the courts to afford it, but at the same time the author has a larger concept in mind as she attempts to discern patterns both in actions and attitudes. She is analyzing not only how the courts are used but how the participants think about the process before they use it, when they use it, and after their case is decided. She shows that most of the litigants approach using the court with some trepidation, and how they view the process while it is taking place may depend on how they are treated by the court on a day-to-day basis. H
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Approximate Word count = 1918
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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