Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T03:09:00.724Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Formal Litigation and Professional Insecurity: Legal Entrepreneurship in South India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Robert L. Kidder
Robert L. Kidder*
Affiliation:
Temple University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Social facts about a profession are usually treated by sociologists as dependent variables—phenomena to be explained (e.g., Carlin, 1962, 1966; Becker, et al., 1961). I propose to analyze the features of the legal profession in a society which uses such services mostly in the pursuit of litigation. While the facts about the Indian legal profession are no doubt interesting in themselves, my purpose is to examine what can be learned about the process of litigation from a study of the profession. The relationship between lawyers' careers and work styles on the one hand and the demands for law work on the other has been presented in general terms by Rueschemeyer (1973: Ch. 1). The data I shall discuss deals with this relationship in more detail, and can, I submit, yield important support for a critique of the various analyses of litigation which assume that its function is dispute settlement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 9 , Issue 1: Litigation and Dispute Processing: Part I , Fall 1974 , pp. 11 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 The Law and Society Association

References

AUBERT, Wilhelm (1969) “Law as a Way of Resolving Conflicts: The Case of a Small Industrialized Society,” in Laura, NADER (ed.) Law in Culture and Society. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
BAZELON, David T. (1960) “Portrait of a Business Generalist,” 29 Commentary 277.Google Scholar
BECKER, Howard S., Blanche, GEER, Everett C., HUGHES, and Anselm, STRAUSS (1961) Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
BOHANNON, Paul (1973) “The Differing Realms of Law,” in Donald, BLACK and Maureen, MILESKI (eds.) The Social Organization of Law. New York: Seminar Press. (Reprinted from The Ethnography of Law, supplement to 67 American Anthropologist [1965].).Google Scholar
CARLIN, Jerome (1966) Lawyers' Ethics. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
CARLIN, Jerome (1962) Lawyers On Their Own. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
COHN, Bernard S. (1961) “From Indian Status to British Contract,” 21 Journal of Economic History 613.Google Scholar
COHN, Bernard S. (1959) “Some Notes on Law and Change in North India,” 8 Economic Development and Cultural Change 79.Google Scholar
COSER, Lewis (1956) The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
ECKHOFF, T. (1966) “The Mediator, the Judge, and the Administrator in Conflict Resolution,” 10 Acta Sociologica 158.Google Scholar
GALANTER, Marc (1972) “The Aborted Restoration of ‘Indigenous’ Law in India,” 14 Comparative Studies in Society and History 53.Google Scholar
GULLIVER, P.H. (1973) “Negotiations as a Mode of Dispute Settlement: Towards a General Model,” 7 Law & Society Review 667.Google Scholar
KIDDER, Robert (1974) “Litigation as a Strategy for Personal Mobility: The Case of Urban Caste Association Leaders,” 33 Journal of Asian Studies 177.Google Scholar
KIDDER, Robert (1973) “Courts and Conflict in an Indian City: A Study in Legal Impact,” 11 Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 121.Google Scholar
LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW (1968-69) Volume 3, Nos. 2 & 3 (Special issue concerning the legal profession in India).Google Scholar
MACAULAY, Stewart (1963) “Non-contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study,” 28 American Sociological Review 55.Google Scholar
MAYHEW, Bruce (1974) “Size and Density of Interaction in Social Aggregates.” (Mimeo).Google Scholar
PARSONS, Talcott (1964) “A Sociologist Looks at the Legal Profession,” in Talcott PARSONS, Essays in Sociological Theory. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
ROSENTHAL, Douglas E. (1974) Lawyer and Client: Who's in Charge? New York: Russell Sage Foundation.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ROTH, Julius A. (1962) “The Treatment of Tuberculosis as a Bargaining Process,” in Arnold, ROSE (ed.) Human Behavior and Social Processes: An Interactionist Approach. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
RUESCHEMEYER, Dietrich (1973) Lawyers and Their Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SCHEFF, Thomas J. (1966) Being Mentally Ill. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
VAN VELSEN, J. (1966) “Procedural Informality, Reconciliation, and False Comparisons,” in Gluckman, Max (ed.) Ideas and Procedures in African Customary Law. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
WASSERSTROM, Richard (1971) “Lawyers and Revolution,” in Jonathan, BLACK (ed.) Radical Lawyers. New York: Avon Books.Google Scholar