Source: (1989) Yale Law Journal 98(8):1689-1709.
This article analyzes law and legal culture by drawing on interpretive anthropology and political and legal theory. Legal culture is created through a dynamic process and the spirit of law is not handed down from the top by an elite, but is challenged and reinvented by local legal practices. County courts and neighborhood justice centers are examined in detail as examples of institutions that both invent and transmit law through the dynamic interaction of local empowerment and official control. Law is invented by legal officials and ordinary people finding redress for their grievances.
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