Abstract
“Secretary: Fill in these papers, this is how to begin. Your name is a number, your story is a case, your need a request, your hopes will be filed. Come back next week.” Gian-Carlo Menotti, The Consul Act I, Scene 2
“Secretary: Fill in these papers, this is how to begin. Your name is a number, your story is a case, your need a request, your hopes will be filed. Come back next week.”
Gian-Carlo Menotti, The Consul, Act I, Scene 2
This article was original published in Working Paper, Center for Law and Behavioral Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI, 1976. Reprinted with permission.
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Notes
- 1.
Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States (Harvard University Press, 2d. ed., 1972); Hirschman, “Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Further Reflections and a Survey of Recent Contributions,” 13 Social Science Information 7 (1974).
- 2.
One need not pose such an extreme situation to indicate one of the real problems with the concept of “access.” The less powerful person may be able to get inside the courthouse door, but the structure of the process and the rules of the game may give great advantages to the more powerful. See Galanter, “Why the ‘Haves’ Come out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change,” 9 Law & Society Review 95 (1974). In short, access may be a minimum condition for the realization of the ideals of many legal systems, but it is not necessarily a sufficient condition.
- 3.
See van Velsen, “Procedural Informality, Reconciliation, and False Comparisons,” in Ideas and Procedures in African Customary Law, at 137 (M. Gluckman ed., Oxford Press, 1969).
- 4.
“I have argued, and I think the data demonstrate quite convincingly, that the people who run the organizations which supply the vices in American cities are members of the business, political, and law enforcement communities—not simply members of a criminal society.” Chambliss, “Vice, Corruption, Bureaucracy, and Power,” 1971 Wisconsin Law Review 1150, 1172.
- 5.
Nader, “Styles of Court Procedure: To Make the Balance,” in Law in Culture and Society, at 69 (L. Nader ed., Aldine Press, 1969).
- 6.
Collier, Law and Social Change in Zanacantan (Stanford Press 1973).
- 7.
Hunt and Hunt, “The Role of Courts in Rural Mexico,” in Peasants in the Modern World, at 109 (P. Bock ed., New Mexico Paperbacks, 1969).
- 8.
Nader, supra note 5, at 69.
- 9.
Nader, supra note 5, at 85.
- 10.
Nader, “Up the Anthropologist—Perspectives Gained from Studying Up,” in Reinventing Anthropology, at 284, 300 (D. Hymes ed., Random House, 1969).
- 11.
See Danzig, “Toward the Creation of a Complementary Decentralized System of Criminal Justice,” 26 Stanford Law Review 1 (1973).
- 12.
See Felstiner, “Influences of Social Organization on Dispute Processing,” 9 Law & Society Review 63 (1974). Professors Danzig and Felstiner have debated the matter further. See Danzig and Lowy, “Everyday Disputes and Mediation in the United States: A Reply to Professor Felstiner,” 9 Law & Society Review 675 (1975); Felstiner, “Avoidance as Dispute Processing: An Elaboration,” id. at 695.
- 13.
Nader, “Forums for Justice: A Cross-Cultural Perspective,” 31 Journal of Social Issues 151, 159 (1975).
- 14.
Hunt and Hunt, supra note 7, at 109.
- 15.
Id. at 137.
- 16.
See, e.g., Cheetham, Quevedo, Rojas, Sader and Vanderschueren, Pobladores: Del Legalismo a la Justicia Popular (CIDU, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Oct. 1972); Equipo de Estudios Poblacionales del “CIDU,” “Pobladores y Administracion de Justicia,” 3 Eure 134 (Julio 1972); Fiori, “Campamento Nueva Habana: Estudio de una Experiencia de Autoadministracion de Justicia,” 3 Eure 83 (April 1963); Karst, Schwartz and Schwartz, The Evolution of Law in the Barrios of Caracas (UCLA Latin American Center 1973); Means, Book Review, 72 Michigan Law Review 1481 (1974); Langton and Rapoport, “Social Structure, Social Context, and Partisan Mobilization: Urban Workers in Chile, 8 Comparative Political Studies 318 (1975); Pearse, “Some Characteristics of Urbanization in the City of Rio de Janeiro,” in Urbanization in Latin America, at 191 (P. Hauser, ed., Columbia Univ. Press, 1961); Perlman, “Rio’s Favelas and the Myth of Marginality,” 5 Politics and Society 131 (1975); Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The Law of the Oppressed: The Construction and Reproduction of Legality in Pasargada Law (unpublished paper, 1974); Vanderschueren, “Political Significance of Neighborhood Committees in the Settlements of Santiago,” in The Chilean Road to Socialism, at 256 (D. Johnson ed., Anchor Books, 1973). See also, Greenfield, The Cabo Eleitoral and the Articulation of Local Community and National Society in Pre-1968 Brazil (Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Latin America Discussion Paper, No. 54, Aug. 1, 1975).
- 17.
J. Macaulay, A Skeptic’s Guide to the Literature of Poverty 5-6 (Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Dec. 1974). See also Campbell, “‘Degrees of Freedom’ and the Case Study,” 8 Comparative Political Studies 178 (1975).
- 18.
See Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure 71-82 (2d ed., Free Press, 1957); Gottfried, “Political Machines” in 12 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 248-52 (1968).
- 19.
See Perlman, supra note 16, at 141.
- 20.
See Lisa Redfield Peattie, “The Sewer Controversy: A Case History” in The View from the Barrio, at 71 (University of Michigan Press, 1968).
- 21.
Id. at 87.
- 22.
Id. at 87-8.
- 23.
See Nader, supra note 13, at 168.
- 24.
19 American Journal of Comparative Law 514 (1971).
- 25.
Id. at 515-6.
- 26.
See Schaffer and Huang Wen-hsien, “Distribution and the Theory of Access,” 6 Development & Change 13 (1975); Schaffer and Lamb, “Exit, Voice and Access,” 13 Social Science Information 73 (1974).
- 27.
See Wright, “The Harassed Decision Maker; Time Pressures, Distractions, and the Use of Evidence,” 59 Journal of Applied Psychology 555 (1974).
- 28.
See Schwartz, “Waiting, Exchange, and Power: The Distribution of Time in Social Systems,” 79 American Journal of Sociology 841 (1974).
- 29.
See Moore, “Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study,” 7 Law & Society Review 719, 723-9 (1973).
- 30.
See, e.g., Barzel, “A Theory of Rationing by Waiting,” 17 Journal of Law and Economics 73 (1974).
- 31.
See Friedman, “Legal Rules and the Process of Social Change,” 19 Stanford Law Review 786 (1967).
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© 1976 Center for Law and Behavioral Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI
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Macaulay, S. (1976). Access to the Legal Systems of the Americas: Informal Processes. In: Campbell, D. (eds) Stewart Macaulay: Selected Works. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 133. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33930-2_5
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