Criminal Defence and Procedure: Comparative Ethnographies in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States

by T. Scheffer, K. Hannken-Illjes, A. Kozin

Overview

Procedure is not just a programme or a nexus of formalities. It is something done by legal experts and lay participants in a highly concerted ensemble. Procedure frames and advances all law-relevant activities. This book, written by three authors from different disciplinary backgrounds, provides an in-depth comparison of criminal defence work in different legal cultures. Via an ethnographic comparison, this book also shows how defence work responds to the challenges of different procedural regimes and how it contributes to their individual outcomes. Criminal Defence and Procedure opens up new horizons for legal comparison, inviting novel understandings of procedural law as well as possibilities of legal reform.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349311248
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2010
Edition description:	1st ed. 2010
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

THOMAS SCHEFFER is Heisenberg Scholar at the Institute for European Ethnology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, and previously led the law-in-action Research Group at the Free University Berlin. He has conducted ethnographic and discourse analytical research on migration control, social work, legal casework, and parliamentary inquiries. His research interests include micro-sociology, sociology of knowledge, and cultural comparison. Scheffer is spokesperson of the section 'sociology of law' in the German Sociological Association.

KATI HANNKEN-ILLJES is a Senior Lecturer at the Department for German Linguistics, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany. Her research focuses on legal rhetoric, the relation of narrating and arguing and the didactics of teaching interpersonal communication.

ALEXANDER KOZIN is Research Fellow at Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany. His areas of specialization include communication studies, phenomenology, translation theory, semiotics, and law and society. Currently, he is working on a project that examines criminal law in relation to 'subjects with limited culpability'.

Table of Contents

Introducing Procedure Field Access as an Ongoing Accomplishment Procedural Past: Binding and Unbinding Procedural Future: The Politics of Positioning Procedural Presence - Failing and Learning Courts as Ways of Knowing Postscript Notes References