In ambiguous times and Spaces

Most sociolegal research on juries and other forms of lay participation in criminal justicehas been limited to questions of how lay people make decisions. This article proposes expanding this focus through a conceptually and methodologically novel examination ofthe recent incorporation of lay decisi...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Amietta, Santiago Abel|||0000-0003-3633-0207
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:232938
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/232938
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1177/0964663920957378
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Actor-network theory
Argentina
Chronotopes of law
Courthouse ethnography
Jury
Latin America
Lay participation
Descripción
Sumario:Most sociolegal research on juries and other forms of lay participation in criminal justicehas been limited to questions of how lay people make decisions. This article proposes expanding this focus through a conceptually and methodologically novel examination ofthe recent incorporation of lay decision-makers in Argentina's criminal justice system. Based on fieldwork conducted in the province of Córdoba, the article follows jurors asthey enter the courthouses, unsettle normalized everyday practices and spatiotemporalarrangements, and encounter multiple authorities that define their role and legitimate belonging therein. The work of these multiple entities, the article argues, locates jurorsin ambiguous situations between public and private spaces of the courthouses, andultimately accentuate their alterity vis-'a-vis legal professionals. Drawing on an ethno-graphic approach inspired in actor-network theory and on Mariana Valverde's sociolegal elaborations of Bakhtin's notion ofchronotope, the article looks at this judicial reform as asite for fruitful examination of law's multiscalar power dynamics, and it argues that legal institutions be investigated as flexible, fragile, and contingent assemblages of practices beyond their official representations.