Democracy, Courts and the Information Order
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4180409 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gillian K Hadfield (0000-0003-4124-8187, University of Southern California), Dan Ryan (0000-0001-8627-5029, University of Toronto) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 67-95 |
| Publication date | 2013-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-9756 • E-ISSN: 1474-0583 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0003975613000039 |
| OpenAlex | W2012229471 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 20 |
Conventional wisdom about civil litigation, both among scholars and political actors, holds that abuse of the legal process is common, that there is too much litigation, that it is "all about the money", and that "a bad settlement is better than a good trial". This constellation of attitudes that emphasize the economic function of law suggests that courts are an expensive conflict resolution mechanism of last resort and that their use would be minimized in a healthy market-based democracy. In this paper we apply a new sociological framework to understand the meaning and function of civil litigation in a democratic society. We focus in particular on the democratic function of the informational characteristics of litigation that require substantial disclosure and engagement between plaintiff, defendant and third parties. Instead we examine the role courts play in the maintenance and attainment of a social information order - norms and legal rules governing the sharing and withholding of information that depend on and constitute particular status relationships between actors (Ryan 2006). Using interviews and surveys of family members of victims of 9/11 we develop a theory of the lived experience of entitlement to information in Anglo-American legal settings with suggestions of how these ideas might translate to civil law systems
Business · Democracy · Economics · Entitlement (fair division) · Law and economics · Order (exchange) · Plaintiff · Political science · Politics · Settlement (finance) · Sociology · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses
Against Settlement
What Is the Point of Equality?
Why People Obey the Law
A Relational Model of Authority in Groups
The levers of legal design
Democracy and Equality
Getting the Word Out
The Social Organization of Legal Contacts
After Legal Consciousness
What Political Institutions Does Large-Scale Democracy Require
Grievances, Claims, and Disputes
Framing the Choice Between Cash and the Courthouse
Influences of Social Organization on Dispute Processing
Everyday understandings of the law in working-class America
Language, Audience, and the Transformation of Disputes
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |