Law, Culture, and Ritual: Disputing Systems in Cross-Cultural Context. By Oscar G. Chase. New York: New York Univ. Press, 2005. Pp. 224. $45.00 cloth; $20.00 paper.

Abstract

Law, Culture, and Ritual: Disputing Systems in Cross-Cultural Context. By Oscar G. Chase. New York: New York Univ. Press, 2005. Pp. 224. $45.00 cloth; $20.00 paper. Chase, a specialist in civil litigation at NYU Law School, teaches a seminar called and Disputing. Law, Culture, and Ritual-Disputing Systems in Cross-Cultural Context is an outgrowth of that interdisciplinary seminar. It is a compact book (with a beautiful cover), presented in the clear and genial voice of a dedicated teacher. Law, Culture, and Ritual begins with an attempt by the author/ instructor to jolt readers out of a complacent acceptance of the inevitability of the dispute that happen to be most familiar to them. Chase devotes an entire chapter to the Azande of Central Africa, who use oracles to resolve disputes over witchcraft and adultery. He explains how Azande dispute reflect local belief systems and social and political hierarchies and how, reflexively, those and procedures help maintain class and gender relations. remainder of the book draws lessons from the Azande example, demonstrating how dispute in every society and help constitute its culture. Aware of recent critiques of the mirror thesis, Chase nevertheless contends that, The metaphysics, values, symbols, and social hierarchy of any collectivity will set the bounds within which it organizes its dispute-handling institutions (p. 5). Culture imposes limits on what is possible in a given society, even though professional elites exercise some autonomy in devising dispute according to their own specialized interests, and even though transnational influences and legal transplants may relocate dispute beyond the cultures in which they were originally developed. Our own oracles, according to Chase, are our law courts, where evidence is submitted to the jury much as benge, a potentially poisonous substance, is fed to chickens by the Azande. Like the Azande, we know our law oracles are fallible, yet we exalt the process by which they render their verdicts, and we surround that process with ritual that protects judges and jurors from recrimination or even revenge. Like the Azande, moreover, we have created dispute and procedures that are peculiarly appropriate-indeed, essential-for our society. Chase identifies and discusses four distinctive characteristics of civil litigation in America: the trial jury, the extensive use of pretrial discovery, the relatively passive role of the trial judge, and the adversarial deployment of expert testimony. He argues that these features distinguish American law not only from that of the Azande but also from other European legal systems and even from the British system that was our common law heritage. unique features of the American system of adjudication in civil cases derive, according to Chase, from a distinctive American ideology reduced by Lipset to just five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faire (p. …