The Possibility of Popular Justice

Series

• Law, Meaning, and Violence

Can popular justice ever be a real alternative to the violence and coercion of state law? To answer this question, The Possibility of Popular Justice describes and analyzes the experiences of one of the best known cases of community mediation—the San Francisco Community Boards.

The SFCB program is firmly rooted in the ideals of the alternative dispute resolution movement: popular sovereignty, direct governance, the capacity of judges to exercise social power autonomously, and a minimum level of bureaucracy. Yet even this program embodies contradictions inherent in many popular justice systems, since it borrows procedures, symbols, rituals, and language from the invasive state law it seeks to replace.

Half of the essays presented here grew out of a major research project on the SFCB directed by Fred DuBow; half seek to define popular justice and debate whether such programs can ever be either popular or just. The essays emphasize the mutually constitutive character of law and society and examine how the surrounding social context reshapes and subverts a visionary program of community-controlled popular justice.

Sally Engle Merry is Professor of Anthropology, Wellesley College.

Neal Milner is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program on Conflict Resolution, University of Hawaii.

Praise / Awards

• "You do not have to be involved in mediation to appreciate this book. The authors use the case as a launching pad to evaluate the possibilities and 'impossibilities' of building community in complex urban areas and pursuing popular justice in the shadow of state law."
  —Deborah M. Kolb, Harvard Law School and Simmons College
  
• "This in-depth study of the San Francisco Community Boards is a fitting tribute to the initiators of both the program, Ray Shonholtz, and the investigation, Red DuBow. The first evaluation of any mediation program by such a distinguished group of social scientists, it shuns the usual criteria (caseload, client satisfaction) to address the fundamental issue posed by its title. It asks hard questions about whether mediation can promote justice, be popular, serve a community, and empower. Acutely aware of the twin dangers of marginality and cooperation, the authors give answers that are neither the dreamer's condescending dismissal nor the true believer's unwavering conviction."
  —Richard Abel, UCLA Law School
  
• "Few collections are so well integrated, analytically penetrating, or as readable as this fascinating account. It is a 'must read' for anyone interested in community mediation."
  —William M. O'Barr, Duke University
  
• ". . . important to the growing literature on community empowerment."
  —Choice
  
• ". . . there is something for just about any reader who is interested in community mediation. . . ."
  —Federal Lawyer
  
• "These immensely important articles—fifteen in all—take several academic perspectives on the program's diverse history, impact, and implications for 'popular justice.' These articles will richly inform the program, polemical, and political perspectives of anyone working on 'alternative programs' of any sort."
  —IARCA Journal
  
• "The Possibility of Popular Justice is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of community mediation and should be very high on the list of anyone seriously concerned with dispute resolution in general. The book offers many rewards for the advanced student of law and society studies."
  —Law and Politics Book Review