Making Law at The Doorway: The Clerk, the Court, and The Construction of Community in a New England Town

Abstract

This paper analyzes the politics of disputing in complaint hearings held by the court clerk in a district criminal court in Massachusetts. By examining struggles over the meaning of local conflicts, it suggests the implications of detailed studies of dispute processing for our understanding of how systems of legal and social meanings are constituted and reproduced. The paper argues that the work of the court, the roles played by court officials, and the meaning of law and of community at particular moments in time are shaped in the interaction of court staff with local citizens. At the same time, it argues that these interactions are constrained by culturally and historically embedded relations of class, ethnicity, and power. Thus the paper suggests how the practice of complaint hearings both reproduces and transforms systemic inequalities and oppositions, and points to the importance of interactive rather than dichotomizing approaches for studying the interconnection and interpenetration of law with society.