Abstract
Beginning with the idea of law as discourse, this essay examines the ways in which legal method is gendered. Texts, such as affidavits and court forms, and local ‘mundane’ practices are part of the production and affirmation of the law as a producer of truth. A possible methodology for exploring legal method, ‘legal ethnography,’ is introduced as a means by which wemight explicate how legal method works to support and reify legal discourse, in the process silencing the voices of women. The essay also explores how legal method comes to be accepted as a ‘tool of the trade’ by lawyers, who then use it to translate the primary narrative of the client into a cause of action that is comprehensible to lawyers, judges, and other actors in the legal system. Finally, the limitations of the proposed methodology are considered.
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Beaman-Hall, L. Legal ethnography: Exploring the gendered nature of legal method. Critical Criminology 7, 53–74 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02461094
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02461094