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...
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| Format: | article |
| Publication Date: | 2020 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Repository: | Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB |
| Language: | English |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ddd.uab.cat:232938 |
| Online Access: | https://ddd.uab.cat/record/232938 https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1177/0964663920957378 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Actor-network theory Argentina Chronotopes of law Courthouse ethnography Jury Latin America Lay participation |
| Summary: | 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. |
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