 Files
Cases develop in series of file-solicitor-interactions. I.e. the
solicitor responds to the open tasks left by the last session. The solicitor
links up with interim results and, in this manner, accumulates chains of case-work.
These chains can be observed according to the traces left in the minute file notes,
correspondence and resulting ‘official’ documents.
Case-work develops step-by-step. It includes attempts that lead towards dead ends.
It includes ‘dirty investigations’ not permissible in court. It anticipates
the standards set by court and law. It reflects the interim score between the
competing cases as well as orders communicated in pre-direction hearings. The
solicitor must be capable to work in this manner on the details of several cases
respectively their files concurrently.
As a result, a file leaves trajectories of pre trial preparation: successful
and unsuccessful attempts to build on a strong case for the coming contest in
court. It records details according to the legal aid-system in small temporal-units.
Only what enters the file as inscription is linked up to in due course. Only
what enters this memory is elected to be passed on the brief to the barrister
who is hired to represent the matter in open court. The file resembles an “obligatory
passage point” (Michel Callon) for arguments on their way to court.
Due to this inscription apparatus, case-work is capable of binding together a
complex lot of materials and contributors. The file is, comparable to a scrapbook,
a means for creative, inventive tinkering ’in time’. It orchestrates
multiple voices, later represented by one spokesperson in the name of the client
only. In light of the file, the day in court turns into a highly compressed
and selective event.
- Courtroom
- Stories and Arguments
|
| |
 New activities
Special Issue on "Law and Biography" in BIOS
Call for Abstracts/French-German Conference on “Enfermement/Freiheitsentzug”
Latest Texts/Books
My ethnography on the English Crown Court procedure by BRILL
Review
Our comparative ethnography of criminal defence work in different procedural
regimes by PALGRAVE
Teaching in SS 2011
Scheffer: „Einführung in die Institutionelle Ethnographie“ Kurs in Moodle
Scheffer: „Was tun Verfahren? Eine sozialwissenschaftliche Debatte“ Kurs in Moodle
Scheffer: „Arbeitskreis politische Ethnographie“ Termine in Moodle
|
|
THE CASE STUDIES
Files
