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The Legal Dimensions of Everyday Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Daniel Jutras
Daniel Jutras
Affiliation:
Director, Institute of Comparative Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University, 3644 Peel Street, Montreal (Quebec),CanadaH3A 1W9, [email protected]
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Abstract

This essay argues for a practice of comparative legal scholarship emerging from the insight of legal pluralists. If everyday life is a normative order (or a constellation of normative orders), it can be compared to other, less transient normative orders. Continuity, discontinuity, shared and divergent characteristics can then be identified. The language and features of one can be used to understand the other. Through cultural translation, “microlegal” and macrolegal systems can become the object of studies in comparative law. The argument proceeds in three steps. In the first part, drawing from the work of Michael Reisman, the conceptual apparatus of official law is enlisted to present the mundane encounter as a space of interaction subject to “legal” ordering. The second part begins from the other end — it points to the uses of everyday life as allegory for fundamental problems of macrolegal ordering, as illustrated in the work of Roderick Macdonald. In the final part, the two strands are brought together in a comparison of the features of microlegal encounters, on the one hand, and large scale contractual relationships described by Jean-Guy Belley, on the other hand. Architectural continuity is manifested in the fact that similar tensions or polarities are part of the structure of normative orders at each layer, from the brief encounter to the formal, institutionalized, and large-scale examples of human interaction.

Résumé

Ce texte cherche à établir une pratique du droit comparé qui tienne compte des enseignements tirés du pluralisme juridique. Si la vie quotidienne et les rencontres fortuites sont régies par une constellation d'ordres normatifs, elles peuvent être comparées à d'autres ordres normatifs plus explicites et plus stables. On peut alors mettre en lumière la continuité, la discontinuité, et les caractéristiques divergentes et partagées de ces ordres existants à des niveaux différents dans une communauté donnée. La traduction culturelle permet de faire usage du langage et des concepts propre à chaque ordre pour mieux comprendre l'autre. Les micro-systèmes juridiques deviennent des objets d'étude dont le droit comparé peut se saisir. Le texte est divisé en trois parties. La première tire des travaux de Michael Reisman une lecture de la vie quotidienne à partir des concepts du droit officiel. La deuxième partie procède à l'inverse, et montre comment le droit officiel peut être saisi à partir des modes de pensée propres à la vie quotidienne, comme le suggère Roderick Macdonald. La troisième partie réunit ces deux approches pour les fins d'une comparaison entre le micro-droit et le droit du contrat tel que décrit par Jean-Guy Belley, laquelle révèle une parenté de structure dans les tensions et les polarités qui se manifestent à chacun de ces niveaux d'interaction sociale.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , April 2001 , pp. 45 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2001

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References

1 Reisman, M., Law in Brief Encounters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)Google Scholar [hereinafter Brief Encounters].

2 Online: Law Commission of Canada Homepage http://www.lcc.gc.ca (last modified: 19 April 2001).

3 On those elements as characteristic of legal orders, and on the definitional question generally, a useful summary can be found in Tamahana, B., “An Analytical Map of Social Scientific Approaches to the Concept of Law” (1995) 15 Oxford J. of Legal Stud. 501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar [hereinafter “An Analytical Map”]; and Tamahana, B., “A Non-Essentialist Version of Legal Pluralism” (2000) 27 J. L. & Soc'y 296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar [hereinafter “A Non-Essentialist Version”].

4 The inquiry could proceed in a wide variety of settings. As Sunstein, C.R. notes in “Social Norms and Social Roles” (1996) 96 Colum. L. Rev. 903 at 914CrossRefGoogle Scholar [hereinafter “Social Norms”]: “In fact there are norms about nearly every aspect of human behavior. There are norms about littering, dating, smoking, singing, when to stand, when to sit, when to show anger, when, how, and with whom to express affection, when to talk, when to listen, when to discuss personal matters, when to use contractions, when (and with respect to what) to purchase insurance.”

5 Brief Encounters, supra note 1 at 97.

6 Ibid. at 39.

7 Ibid. at 45–48.

8 Ibid. at 76–84.

9 Ibid. at 140–147.

10 For a similar conception of the role of sanctions in interactive settings, see Postema, G. “Coordination and Convention at the Foundations of Law” (1982) 11 J. Legal Stud. 165 at 186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar [hereinafter “Coordination and Convention”]: “The sanctions do not create, or constitute, the normative force of the rules (which operate as conventions), nor need they supply the primary motivation for compliance with the rules. Sanctions here have the function of underwriting the conventions and can be useful for at least three related reasons, (i) They make coordination easier and more efficient, because it is no longer necessary to go through the process of mutual replications of patterns of practical reasoning each time coordination is called for. (ii) They reduce the risk that in any particular instance in a recurring situation requiring coordination, some party may fail to exhibit the requisite presence of mind or motivation to achieve proper coordination, (iii) They make it possible immediately to introduce newcomers to the community governed by the conventions; compliance can be counted on, if not because the newcomer shares the appropriate desire for coordination, at least because he will probably wish to avoid the sanction.”

11 Brief Encounters, supra note 1 at 89: “In every type of legal system, the primary or principal function of the formal application of a norm is not — as the language of judgments and verdicts frequently suggest and most of the community may believe — to punish or to otherwise do justice or to give the gods their due by penalizing or securing penance from the violator of the law or some surrogate, if blood penance is deemed necessary. The most urgent objective of a legal application is to maintain the credibility of the system of which it is a part by reaffirming the norm that has been violated and demonstrating the efficacy of the decision process and its commitment to continuing to police the norm. This increases the likelihood of conformity to the norm in the future.”

12 See “An Analytical Map” and “A Non-Essentialist Version”, supra note 3.

13 Brief Encounters, supra note 1 at 174–176.

14 On this idea as a condition of success for the study of law as a manifestation of culture, see Kahn, P., The Cultural Study of Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).Google Scholar

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19 See R.A. Macdonald, “Let's Just Stick to the Rules” (February 1999), online: Law Commission of Canada http://www.lcc.gc.ca/en/pc/message/regles.html (last modified: 19 April 2001).

20 See R.A. Macdonald, “Sometimes It's Better Just to Fix the Dock … or Is It” (August 1998), online: Law Commission of Canada < http://www.lcc.gc.ca/en/pc/message/quai.html > (last modified: 19 April 2001).

21 R.A. Macdonald, “Legal Fictions: the Law's ‘Little White Lies’” (June 1999), online: Law Commission of Canada http://www.lcc.gc.ca/en/pc/message/mensonge.html (last modified: 19 April 2001).

22 See R.A. Macdonald, “Law and Chocolate Bunnies” (April 1998), online: Law Commission of Canada http://www.lcc.gc.ca/en/pc/message/lapin.html (last modified: 19 April 2001); “Heads I win …” (September 1999), online: Law Commission of Canada http://www.lcc.gc.ca/en/pc/message/heads.html (last modified: 19 April 2001).

23 See R.A. Macdonald, “… but Everyone Else Is Allowed To” (December 1998), online: Law Commission of Canada http://www.Icc.gc.ca/en/pc/message/halloween.html (last modified: 19 April 2001).

24 See R.A. Macdonald, “It's Not Fair, He Hit Me First!” (April 1999), online; Law Commission of Canada http://www.lcc.gc.ca/en/pc/message/fair.html (last modified 19 April 2001); “I Was Rolling on the Ground and It Just Fell In!” (February 2000), online: Law Commission of Canada http://www.lcc.gc.ca/en/pc/message/rouler.html (last modified: 19 April 2001).

25 See, for example: Macdonald, R.A., “Pour la reconnaissance d'une normativité implicite et inférentielle” (1986) 18 Sociologie et Sociétés 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Office Politics” (1990) 40 U. Toronto L.J. 419. “Understanding Regulation by Regulations” in Bernier, I. & Lajoie, A., eds‥ Regulations, Crown Corporations and Administrative Tribunals (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985) 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Les Vieilles Gardes. Hypothèses sur l'émergence des normes, l'internormativité et le désordre à travers une typologie des institutions normatives” in Belley, J.G., ed., Le droit soluble. Contributions québécoises à l'étude de l'internormativité (Paris: L.G.D.J. 1996) 233Google Scholar; and “Critical Legal Pluralism as a Construction of Normativity and the Emergence of Law” in Lajoie, A. et al. , eds., Théories et émergence du droit: pluralisme, surdétermination et effectivité (Montreal: Thémis, 1996) 9.Google Scholar

26 See Belley, J.G., “Le pluralisme de Roderick Macdonald: une analyse séquentielle” in Lajoie, A. et al. , eds., Théories et émergence du droit: pluralisme, surdétermination et effectivité (Montreal: Thémis, 1996) 57.Google Scholar

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29 Geertz, C., Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983) at 218Google Scholar [hereinafter Local Knowledge].

30 Brief Encounters, supra note 1 at 54.

31 Among the most commonly cited are Macaulay, S., “Non-Contractual Relations in Business: a Preliminary Study” (1968) 28 Am. Soc. Rev. 55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Moore, S. Falk “Law and Social Change: the Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study” (1973) 7 Law & Soc'y Rev. 719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 The most prominent is still Macneil, I. R., The New Social Contract. An Inquiry into Modern Contractual Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

33 Belley, J.G., Le contrat entre droit, économie et société (Cowansville: Yvon Biais, 1998)Google Scholar [hereinafter Contrat].

34 Ibid. at 107–154.

35 Ibid. at 15–105.

36 See Reisman's description of the system of numbered places in the line for unsold Metropolitan Opera tickets, spontaneously established by participants to limit the time spent physically waiting on location: Brief Encounters, supra note 1 at 73; See also the account of the way in which multiple queues interact with one another in a grocery store in the former Soviet Union, ibid. at 80.

37 Contrat, supra note 33 at 84.

38 See Etzioni, A., “Social Norms: Internalization, Persuasion, and History” (2000) 34 Law & Soc'y Rev. 157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Brief Encounters, supra note 1 at 107.

40 Ibid. at 108: “… [O]rganized hierarchical situations may impose substantive restraints on the boss as well as on the subordinate, though in different ways. The less absolute the hierarchy, the more norms apply to the boss.”

41 Reisman suggests, however, that people are generally submissive in heterarchical queues. See ibid. at 94–95.

42 See “Coordination and Convention”, supra note 10.

43 On the relationship of norms, roles and identity, see “Social Norms”, supra note 4.

44 See in particular Lon Fuller's description of the “interactional foundations of enacted law” in “Human Interaction and the Law” (1969) 14 Am. J. Juris. 1.

45 Brief Encounters, supra note 1 at 9–10.

46 Buyer and supplier share a “bagage cognitif et normatif plus ou moins ineffable”. See Contrat, supra note 33 at 107.

47 Ibid. at 162.

48 Ibid. at 166.

49 Ibid. at 179.

50 Brief Encounters, supra note 1 at 90.

51 On the role of shame and pride, see “Social Norms”, supra note 4 at 941–947.

52 See ibid. at 930, where C. Sunstein describes this as the phenomenon of “norm bandwagon”: “People may support an existing norm publicly not because they are genuinely committed to it, but because they fear social sanctions. As I have said, there is a bandwagon effect when those sanctions diminish or disappear, as many people join the group opposing the existing norm and urging a new one. The result can be astonishingly rapid change.”

53 I am paraphrasing Lon Fuller's idea of the unresolved tension between legalization and shared commitment. See Fuller, L., “Two Principles of Human Association” in Winston, K. I., ed., The Principles of Social Order (Durham: Duke University Press, 1981) 67.Google Scholar

54 Local Knowledge, supra note 29 at 218.