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Litigating Illiteracy: The Media, the Law, and The People of the State of New York v. Adelbert Ward*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Thomas M. Kemple
Thomas M. Kemple
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of British Columbia
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Abstract

Making sense of the problems which illiterate people face in gaining access to justice puts the foundations of both the ethnography of law and the modern justice system itself into question. The essay explores this thesis with reference to the case of an elderly dairy farmer whose arrest for the mercy killing of his ailing brother attracted intense local and national attention. Documents from the trial which deal with the construction and use of evidence, confession, and testimony, along with schematic representations of the personal, community, and media responses to the case as depicted in the award-winning documentary Brother's Keeper (1992), render visible the textual conventions of a litigious society along with its non-literate and even ritual cultural context. The most troubling issue raised by the case involves a crisis in the bureaucratic organization and expert professionalization of modern litigation when it attempts to address the rights and competencies of relatively illiterate people who appear unable to articulate the values and beliefs of any cultural community at all.

Résumé

Comprendre les problèmes qu' éprouvent les personnes illettrées ayant recours à la justice met en jeu les fondements de l'ethnographie du droit et ceux du système judiciaire moderne lui-même. L'auteur analyse cette question a la lumiere du procès d' un vieux fermier accusé de meurtre pour avoir euthanasié son frère souffrant, procès qui a captivé sa communauté et la nation américaine tout entière. Les documents du procès traitant de l'interprétation de la preuve, des aveux et des témoignages, ainsi que les représentations schématiques des réactions des personnes impliquées, de la communauté et des médias telles que dépeintes dans le documentaire primé, Brother's Keeper (1992), mettent en évidence les conventions textuelles auxquelles recourt une société procédurière et la réalité culturelle d'une société non instruite et ritualiste. Le problème le plus épineux que soulève cette affaire constitue l'impuissance respective de la bureaucratie et des experts de profession—émanations du procès moderne—de défendre les droits et d'évaluer la capacité pénale de personnes illettrées en apparence incapables d'exprimer les valeurs et les croyances de quelque groupe culturel que ce soit.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Fall/automne 1995 , pp. 73 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1995

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References

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