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Going to Court: Strategies of Dispute Management in an American Urban Neighborhood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Sally Engle Merry
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Abstract

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An analysis of the strategies of disputing pursued by the residents of a polyethnic American urban neighborhood reveals that they frequently resort to courts to manage interpersonal and crime-related disputes. Because the legal machinery available to them rarely resolves these disputes, however, the court functions as a sanction rather than a dispute settlement forum. In the absence of effective alternative informal or formal modes of resolving disputes, disputants resort to violence, avoidance, and endurance, a pattern of tolerating ongoing conflict.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , Summer 1979 , pp. 891 - 925
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

*

This paper is based on participant observation in an inner-city housing project from March, 1975, to September, 1976. I am grateful to the Center for Studies of Metropolitan Problems of the National Institute of Mental Health for a predoctoral dissertation grant #1 F31 MH 05088-01 during this period. David Jacobson provided valuable guidance and insight during the entire project. I also benefited from the comments of Donald Black, Marvin Davis, Laura Walters, Kristin Mann, and Susan Silbey on earlier drafts of this paper. Finally, I appreciate the friendship of the residents of Dover Square and their tolerance for my endless questions.

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