11 - John Conley and William O'Barr and Rules versus Relationships

Summary

In the past two decades, continuing the quest to understand how law “really works,” Law and Society scholars attached increasing significance to the dialogues and narratives of people involved in disputes or people experiencing “the law” in their lives. The emphasis on language and discourse has been shared by scholars coming from backgrounds in political science, sociology, and law, as featured in the work of Sarat and Felstiner (see Chapter 17) and Ewick and Silbey (see Chapter 19). Conley and O'Barr, the team perhaps most identified with the study of legal language, reached the subject through linguistics and anthropology after their own idiosyncratic path to collaboration. This interview highlights some of the differences of emphasis produced by the disciplinary toolbox, though many concerns – such as observing and listening in as nonintrusive a way as possible – are shared in common.

Perhaps not surprising for scholars interested in conversations (albeit of a legal variety), their attention to the quality of conversations is manifest in the work itself. For one, their approach to squeezing meanings from language involves subjecting texts to dialogue itself, using discussion as an analytical tool. Second, their desire to speak across disciplines and to those outside of academia, especially, drives a passion for the words' use in reporting their research. Can a sophisticated understanding of how language and culture shape the legal world be rendered simple enough to reach a wide audience?