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Trust and the temporalities of law
Abstract
With a strong focus on social practices under plural legal conditions, the papers in this volume discuss how people operate within the various temporalities of law. The papers show that the competence to navigate the complex web of temporalities and legal orders is highly unequally distributed. Most papers in this volume testify to the stratifying implications of time when asymmetrically instrumentalised within the context of these social practices. The introduction discusses various classifications of time and argues that are important for analysing law's temporalities in the sense of the temporal validity of law, temporal aspects of legislation, decision making, and of evidence and causation. They serve to clarify that the nature of the problems differs depending on whether they arise from social or specific legal temporalities. The paper suggests studying not only temporalities of law but paying special attention to the temporalities within law. This is followed by a discussion of how law connect past, present and the future, with special attention to memories of the past. While the third section is devoted to problems that arise when law ‘borrows’ the temporalities of other disciplines, the fourth section deals with the contradictions and frictions arising from acceleration and hyperregulation. In the last section of this paper, speculations are made on how the issues analysed in this volume might affect uncertainty, risk and trust in law.
... While scholars have highlighted the close relationship between law, spatialization, and temporalization (Braverman et al. 2014), legal pluralism has received limited attention in this context (von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 2014a). Foregrounding the role of justice processes in the mediation of geographically dispersed communities, this article shows how, in the legal plurality that exists among exiled South Sudanese, different institutions not only relate differently to national borders (von Benda-Beckmann et al. 2009), but also encode different temporal perspectives and expectations (Griffiths 2014;von Benda-Beckmann 2014;von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 2014b). As opposed to individualized state justice, which is limited by national borders and conceivably blind to the communal roots of disputes, community justice reaches into past events and relationships, regardless of where these took place or evolved, and is also understood as being able to generate resolutions that promise to promote social cohesion and communal harmony, regardless of where those involved in any particular dispute may find themselves in the future. ...
Studies that examine the administration of justice in refugee camps highlight the legal plurality that commonly characterizes such sites, and the normative friction it creates between government and humanitarian institutions and community structures. Drawing upon research among South Sudanese refugees in Uganda and Ethiopia, this article foregrounds the place of transnational networks and temporal experiences in shaping processes of dispute resolution among refugees. South Sudanese refugees regularly turn to community structures to arbitrate disputes, even when these disputes relate to crimes that, under the laws of host states, must be reported to the authorities. As opposed to the individualized formal justice systems of host states, which are limited by borders, community justice links refugees across countries, draws on understandings of past communal events and relationships, prioritizes communal harmony and order, and thus produces a sense of continuity under conditions of dispersal and extreme precarity.
... Therefore, the axiological dimension is characterizing the legal framework, has a big importance to consider a social reality. The axiological part of the legal framework allows us to discuss the value matters of law as a form of public mind [2]. ...
The main point of that article is to consider the axiological aspect of legal temporality. The presupposition of authors is consideration of the legal framework as a specific type of social frameworks. The social temporality theory is applicable for characterizing the temporal modes of social reality. The category of time is discussed as a phenomenon determined by events in terms of the social temporality theory. The authors regard the category of legal time as a special kind of social time. Legal time becomes reality through rules of law, legal events and juridical facts. They function as reference points that shed light on the temporal processes in law. The category of legal time is essential for characterizing the specifics of legal relationships that remain fixed in the past, present and future. The kinds of time are of direct importance to law. These mentioned kinds exist in three temporal dimensions that are absolutes. The law links people and their destiny with the past, regulates the rules of conduct in the present and determines social changes in the future as well as what happens to a person possibly. Thus, the value of time and temporality determines the value of law. Consideration of legal time in the axiological dimension gives us possibility to overview the role of temporal factors in the formation and development of legal relationships.
In 2006, the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER) initiated construction of the El Cercado dam on the Ranchería River, neglecting proper consultation with Indigenous Peoples along the river who mobilized to protect their livelihoods, cultural practices, self-determination, and the sacred lands within the government-recognized “Black Line.” Recently, Law 2415 granted the Ranchería River status as a subject of rights, establishing a Commission of Guardians comprising government and local representatives, signaling a shift toward cooperative stewardship among the region’s diverse communities and stakeholders. This paper offers a novel reading focused on the Wiwa People, as existing literature primarily addresses the Wayúu People’s experiences. Furthermore, most studies frame the normative context surrounding the Ranchería through a “weak” pluralist perspective of the Colombian legal system, often neglecting analytical complexities beyond a state-centered approach. To counter these limitations, we utilize the conceptual framework of Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, whose insights on relational social theory, law’s spatiotemporal dimensions, and water rights enable a more complex yet accurate account of how actors in this context deal with the law and variously articulate it. We argue that von Benda-Beckmann’s approach helps to unravel the challenges posed by hyperregulation while clarifying how strategic mobilization functions within this environment. By adopting this framework alongside a “thick” understanding of the local context, we aim to provide a more sensitive analysis of the evolving legal landscape, shedding light on the struggles over natural resources in Colombia and potentially offering insights for similar conflicts elsewhere.
Acquisition of land rights has been a protracted issue due to the complexity of land laws and regulations in Indonesia. This situation often leads to illegal land disputes and conflicts. This research investigated the aspect of legal certainty in land rights based on Indonesian laws and regulations. This study focused on the aspects of legal certainty in several laws and regulations related to land rights and examined the implications of the Law on Land Acquisition and Government Regulations (PP) of 2021 concerning Management Rights, Land Rights, Flat Units, and Land Registration. The research methods involved a qualitative approach with a normative and juridical approach. The research results highlight significant progress in recent regulations, such as the Perppu Cipta Kerja 2022 and PP 2021 concerning Management Rights, Land Rights, Flat Units, and Land Registration, regarding more efficient and transparent procedures in providing legal certainty in obtaining the rights above ground. This finding implies the need for continuous improvement to strengthen legal certainty and to protect the rights of all parties. This research emphasizes the importance of harmonizing laws and regulations to create a conducive environment for the responsible and sustainable acquisition of land rights in Indonesia.
This paper explores the spatio‐legal dynamics of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and their relation to socioenvironmental justice. It adopts a critical legal geography perspective to unpack ocean lawscape configurations triggered by territorial claims, the international mechanisms for maritime boundary‐making, and state sovereignty instruments. It is empirically focused on the Seaflower marine biosphere reserve (Seaflower‐BR), a protected area amid a geopolitical contestation between Nicaragua and Colombia in the Southwestern Caribbean. By analyzing its spatio‐legal history over two decades (2000‐2021), the paper sheds light on the marine legalities of this region, which are often contradictory and overlapping. Focusing on the marine lawscape of Colombia, it explores the relationship between protected areas and marine territorialization, also reflecting on the governance regimes' effects on indigenous livelihoods and marine biodiversity. The paper draws a threefold conclusion, namely i) marine protected areas are regularly being disrupted, re‐bordered and reconfigured by the international ocean regimes governing the oceans; ii) the link between the creation and management of marine protected areas and territorial jurisdiction compromises social and environmental justice, and iii) inclusion of indigenous legalities might enhance equity and sustainability in ocean governance.
Modern law seems to be designed to keep emotions at bay. The Sentimental Court argues the exact opposite: that the law is not designed to cast out affective dynamics, but to create them. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork - both during the trial of former Lord's Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen at the International Criminal Court's headquarters in The Netherlands and in rural northern Uganda at the scenes of violence - this book is an in-depth investigation of the affective life of legalized transitional justice interventions in Africa. Jonas Bens argues that the law purposefully creates, mobilizes, shapes, and transforms atmospheres and sentiments, and further discusses how we should think about the future of law and justice in our colonial present by focusing on the politics of atmosphere and sentiment in which they are entangled.
p> Fenomena overregulated yang dialami negara Indonesia bersumber dari jumlah peraturan-peraturan pelaksana yang dibentuk oleh Presiden, sehingga secara alamiah melahirkan kondisi hyper regulation . Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis esensi dari peraturan-peraturan pelaksanaan yang dibentuk Presiden dalam sistem ketatanegaraan Indonesia, serta upaya simplifikasi terhadap peraturan-peraturan pelaksanaan yang dibentuk oleh Presiden. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah yuridis normatif, dengan pendekatan kualitatif. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa secara alamiah hyper regulation terjadi secara alamiah akibat jenis dan hierarki serta materi muatan peraturan-peraturan pelaksanaan yang dibentuk oleh Presiden, ataupun pembentukan regulasi-regulasi di lingkungan eksekutif. Namun jenis-jenis peraturan pelaksanaan tersebut dapat dilakukan simplikasi karena memiliki materi muatan yang identik. </p
How does time structure the allocation of responsibility in the context of large-scale corporate crimes? Focusing on the Processo Eternit – a criminal case brought against the former main investor in Europe’s largest asbestos-processing factory in Casale Monferrato (Italy) – this article compares the temporal order of the lived experience of the asbestos disaster in the affected community with the abstract time-reckoning of law. The everyday suffering in the form of the long-term health effects, inscribed in the body through the asbestos fibre, collides with the statute of limitation of the alleged crimes, as stipulated in law and endorsed in the court room. It examines how these incommensurable temporalities reconfigure the allocation of moral and legal responsibility for an industrial disaster and shows how these contradictions are related to the victims’ expectations of justice and their experience of injustice.
The temporality of resistance is one of interregna. Resistance wins, loses, and draws, while old and new power relations continuously rise and fall, being entrenched and resurrected as they are contested and usurped. Just as power radiates from all over, from the state, law, other social institutions, and relationships, resistance is diffused across yet vested in individuals and groups, moving in solidarity through interconnected pasts, presents, and futures. “Interregna” thus resonates with contemporary theories about the multisited nature of power, but expands the scope of attention to temporal heterogeneity. It sees resistance as a great host crossing lands, seas, and times. Protests in this political moment are connected by their fury and determination to overcome injustice, as well as by histories and memories to struggles that came before. “Interregna” also keeps us alert to unknown wrongs that lie ahead, and the need to fight ceaselessly for progressive justice. Understanding resistance as interregna, we sharpen our appreciation for law and power, and the manner by which we study legal mobilization, legal consciousness, and social change.
This chapter applies the relational vulnerability framework to the legal regulation of the married family, particularly the law governing financial distribution on divorce. It argues that, although the legal framework stresses that marriage is a partnership of equals, it nonetheless displays a clear preference for principles of autonomy and individualism. There is an emphasis on the swift termination of financial obligations following divorce, as well as the promotion of private bargaining through the use of prenuptial agreements. The state remains restrained, expecting individuals to resolve disputes without recourse to the courts. The legal framework contributes to the dependency-worker’s marginalisation. If she cannot comply with the state’s expectations of rapid financial recovery from divorce, she is stigmatised and labelled the author of her own misfortune.
Learn the laws of inheritance and teach them to the people; for they are one half of useful knowledge. t·1ohannned (Fyzee 1955: 329) When the prophet created this aphorism he had in mind the rules of in heritance law revealed to him by Allah. We could apply it to social an thropology as well sincethe inheritance of property and the succession to positions of socio-political authority are among the most important elements of social organization. They are the vehicles of continuity which maintain property and authority through time. In many societies, and particularly in those generally studied by anthropologists, inherit ance and succession are closely interconnected with kinship and descent and provide the economic and political substance for the existence and continuity of kinship- or descent-based social groups. They are, as it were, the flesh on the bare bones of kinship relations. The importance of inheritance has, of course, not escaped the notice of social and legal anthropologists, and in recent years several studies have ably demonstrated the point (Radcliffe-Brown 1952, Goodenough 1951, Leach 1961 b, Goody 1962, Lloyd 1962, Gray and Gulliver (eds. ) 1964, Derrett (ed. ) 1965, Gluckman 1972, Moore 1969, Burling 1974). Yet in general, property and inheritance have rather been treated as an appendix to economic and kinship studies.
In this chapter, I draw attention to disputes in rural Morocco that underscore the fact that, in certain localities, normatively defined fault lines between the secular and the sacred can fluctuate along temporal vectors. The mise-en-scène of these events is the weekly market, which in itself constitutes an interface between economic, religious, and legal activities. Ethnographic vignettes of disputes in the market show how the assessment of human behavior in local disputes is informed by spatial and temporal parameters, and how legal and faith-based aspects converge in these parameters.
Based on detailed ethnographic material, New Lithuania in Old Hands analyzes the impact that European Union accession has had upon the countrys aging smallscale farmers, and describes how the reality of Lithuanias EU membership has been a far cry from the scenarios of wealth and overabundance once promised. The text reveals that, in many instances, membership has resulted in a return to subsistence production, increased insecurity and a reinforcement of kinship obligations. Thus instead of treating the European Union as an elite project and voicing the support of various other segments of the population, this volume shows how broad parts of the rural population have been affected by and engaged in processes of change following Lithuanias accession changes that threaten to have a large impact upon the future of the countrys family structures and its farming demographic.
It is of prime importance to provide a much more rigorous scrutiny of the concept of place than can be found in classical time-geography. 'Place' cannot be used simply to designate 'a point in space'. Introduces the term 'locale' to refer to the use of space to provide the settings of social interaction. The properties of these settings - in effect, the distribution of the conditions of action in space and time - are used by agents in the constitution of encounters across space and time. -from Editors
Critical legal geography is practised by an increasing number of scholars in various disciplines, but it has not had the benefit of an overarching theoretical framework that might overcome its currently rather ad hoc character. The Spatial, the Legal and the Pragmatics of World-Making remedies this situation. Presenting a balanced convergence of contemporary socio-legal and critical geographic scholarship, David Delaney offers a ground-breaking contribution to the fast growing field of legal geography. Drawing on strands of critical social studies that inform both of these areas, this book has three primary components. First, it introduces a framework of interpretation and analysis centred on the productive neologisms 'nomosphere' and 'nomoscapes'. Nomosphere refers to the cultural-material environs that are constituted by the reciprocal materialization of 'the legal' and the legal signification of the 'socio-spatial'. Nomoscapes are the spatio-legal expression and the socio-material realization of ideologies, values, pervasive power orders and social projects. They are extensive ensembles of legal spaces within and through which lives are lived and, here, these neologisms are related to the more familiar notions of governmentality and performativity. Second, these neologisms are explored and applied through a series of illustrations and extensive case studies. Demonstrating their utility for scholars and students in relevant disciplines, these 'empirical' studies concern: the public and the private; property and land tenure; governance; the domestic and the international; and legal-spatial confinements and containments. Third, these studies contribute to an ongoing theorization of the experiential, situated pragmatics of 'world-making'. The role of nomospheric projects and counter-projects, techniques and operations is therefore emphasized. Much of what is experientially significant about how the world is as it is and what it's like to be in the world directly implicates the dynamic interplay of space, law, meaning and power. The Spatial, the Legal and the Pragmatics of World-Making provides the interpretive resources necessary for discerning and understanding the practices and projects involved in this interplay.
Legal geography argues that nearly every aspect of law is located, takes place, is in motion, or has some spatial frame of reference. In other words, law is always “worlded” in some way. Likewise, every bit of social space, lived places, and landscapes is inscribed with legal significance. Such fragments of a socially segmented world—the where of law—are not simply inert sites; they are also inextricably implicated in how law happens. The Expanding Spaces of Law offers a collection of innovative chapters that extend the reach of legal geography by opening this academic project up to new perspectives, new problematics, new topics, and—crucially—new voices. The contributors include both recognized and emerging scholars whose home disciplines are law, geography, sociology, and anthropology, and whose primary commitment is to deepening interdisciplinary modes of social inquiry. The introduction presents a thorough overview of the project from its inception in the 1980s through its bridge-building phase in the 1990s, to the more pluralistic, transdisciplinary work of the twenty-first century, suggesting directions for future research. Substantive chapters cover sophisticated critiques of the concepts of time and temporality that inform conventional approaches to legal space; the utility of pragmatism, ethnomethodology, comparative law, and procedural law; spatio-legal studies of the military, street vending, rurality; and governing through emotions at work.
Research concerning law and social change has almost always treated time as a universal constant and a baseline against which variations in behavior can be measured. Yet a significant literature exists demonstrating that researchers can also regard time as a socially constructed phenomenon requiring analytic interpretation in its own right. This article explores two aspects of the human experience of time that were especially important for the residents of a rural American community: the sense of time's iterative character and its linear or irreversible quality. These two ways of experiencing and conceptualizing time played a significant part in efforts by residents of Sander County, Illinois, to define their community and interpret the social, cultural, and economic transformations it was undergoing. They were also important in the residents' efforts to frame and define conflict within the community and to determine when law should or should not be invoked. The article examines some ways in which the analysis of varying conceptions of time within a community can enhance understanding of expectations, perceptions, and values concerning law in a changing society.
This essay explores the persistence of the concept of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) in global multilateral fishing law. It argues that MSY has contributed to the unsustainable governance of fishing activities by focusing on open access and catch-based management, instead of effort-based management. In response to the dire state of world fish stocks, it has been proposed to cut subsidies to the sector, restrict trade in endangered fish species, install marine protected areas and mainstream the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF). This essay proposes that the FAO’s EAF, which links in to social-ecological resilience thinking, suggests a new philosophy for fisheries management that offers a basis for introducing the aforementioned measures.