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Litigation Across Space and Time: Courts, Conflict, and Social Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

David M. Engel
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Abstract

One of the problems facing researchers who have studied courts across time and space has been the cultural variability of seemingly uniform analytic categories, including conceptions of time and space themselves. This article proposes that we take such variations in meaning as a starting point for comparative studies of courts and social change rather than viewing them as were “noise” in the system. Litigation in Chiangmai, Thailand, is presented as an example. Changing conceptions of “space” in Thailand from the nineteenth century to the present illustrate the transformation of legal and political authority as well as the proliferation of normative systems and dispute processing fora. By focusing analysis on variations in the meaning of a concept such as “space,” it is possible to discern the significance of litigation in relation to unofficial systems of normative ordering and to gain insight into changing relationships among individuals, local communities, patron-client hierarchies, and the state.

Type
Part II: Pushing Trial Court Docket Data to the Limits—and Beyond
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 24 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Longitudinal Studies of Trial Courts , 1990 , pp. 333 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

For their contributions at various stages in the writing of this essay, I would like to thank Frank Munger, Frank Reynolds, Aim-On Truwichien, and Barbara Yngvesson. Portions of the essay are derived from presentations to the Program on Conflict Resolution and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I wish to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions provided on both of those occasions and to thank Neal Milner in particular.

References

1 Elsewhere (Engel, 1987) I have described how changing conceptions of time in an Illinois county revealed tensions between various views of social order and of law among the residents of a community experiencing profound social and economic transformations. Patterns of litigation in the locality and the social meanings attached to litigation reflected the changes the community was experiencing. By focusing on the various conceptions of time that I found among residents, it was possible to understand how different groups perceived the legitimate and nonlegitimate role of law. Thus the concept of time, which is often taken as a given or as a universal constant in court studies, proved to be particularly revealing when viewed as part of the local scene to be observed and interpreted rather than as one of the instruments of interpretation. I will not repeat the analysis of time and litigation in Sander County here.