Adversarial Case-Making: An Ethnography of English Crown Court Procedure
Sep 2010 · BRILL
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About this ebook
Cases are not objects at hand for legal decision-making; cases are not echoes from a past crime. Cases are, first of all, made within compound discourse apparatus, here the English Crown Court and the procedure/s attached to it. This book reveals the legal production of cases including their relevant features. The socio-legal ethnography visits the natural sites of adversarial case-making: law firms, barristers’ chambers, and Crown Courts. It examines the role and dynamics of client-lawyer meetings, pre-trial hearings, plea bargaining sessions, and jury trials. It focuses on the lawyers’ case-making activities, their procedural contexts, and the resulting cases. As an ethnographic discourse study, the book develops a trans-sequential perspective on the interrelated events and processes of case-making – and by doing so, overcomes the shortcomings of talk-bias and text-bias. The trans-sequential approach pays out in detailed case studies on an alibi, on guilt, or the barrister’s notes; it pays out as well in cross-case studies dealing with legal care, procedural infrastructure, or the case system in the common law tradition.
Cases are not objects at hand for legal decision-making; cases are not echoes from a past crime. Cases are, first of all, made within compound discourse apparatus, here the English Crown Court and the procedure/s attached to it. This book reveals the legal production of cases including their rele...
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About the author
Thomas Scheffer led the law-in-action Research Group. Currently he is Heisenberg scholar at the Institute for European Ethnology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He published on communication/ knowledge processes in migration control, social work, parliamentary inquiries, and legal casework. His research interests include micro-sociology, sociology of knowledge, political ethnography, and cultural comparison/translation. Scheffer is spokesperson of the section “sociology of law” in the German Sociological Association.
Thomas Scheffer led the law-in-action Research Group. Currently he is Heisenberg scholar at the Institute for European Ethnology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He published on communication/ knowledge processes in migration control, social work, parliamentary inquiries, and legal casewo...
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