Giudici, avvocati, giustizia e ideologia: una ricerca sul mondo del diritto in Colombia

Abstract

The study of law in Colombia undertaken by German Silva Garcia fills four vol-umes. The first of these deals with the legal profession, the second with the judiciary, the third with the administration of justice and the fourth with the professional ideol-ogy espoused by the country’s legal practitioners. The research is the result of 210 interviews conducted with legal practitioners in Bogota and its province, of 57 in-depth interviews aimed at acquiring qualitative as well as quantitative data, of the results compiled in a series of focus groups and of the author’s own professional experience as an attorney. The unequivocally clear result is therefore a study that is empirical in nature, although it is also one that goes further than merely describing the data collected, organising and interpreting them in the light of a prevalently conflictual sociological theory, much of which can be traced back to the approach adopted by the theories of labelling. The survey deals with criminal law in particular, highlighting its eminently politi-cal nature and tackling the study of crime in its stigmatising dimension of social con-struction. In addition, while redefining the concept of deviance, the author proposes the new term of divergence, which has less of an evaluative connotation and is more explicit in its intention to identify a potentially criminogenous and criminal social area of conflict. Silva Garcia clearly highlights the ideological and artificial content of law, but at the same time underlines its reality and social importance. Although the law con-structs a thoroughly artificial social reality, that reality does not always contribute to the development of democracy. Nevertheless, the law remains the most effective tool that human organisations have found to date for guaranteeing acceptable levels of freedom and equality between individuals.