Laypeople and the Law: Understanding Social Inequalities

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[...] Study of complaints of prisoners. Law and Society 329-348. https://doi.org/10.3917/drs.087.032 Herlin-Giret, C., & Spire, A. (2022). Seizing justice without knowing it: Trajectories of harmed taxpayers. Genèses, p.10. Lévy-Bruhl, H. (1955). [...]

[...] This approach considers injustice in law and in the handling of applicants who bring a situation that they believe they are victims of to an administration that is to decide. It draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, who showed how theefficacité symbolique du droit18 was the result of a social reproduction since the legal frameworks belonged to the dominant classes. This analysis, implicitly taken up by Alexis Spire and Camille Herlin-Giret, legitimates the process of disillusion that we perceive in the case of real estate scams as the result. [...]

[...] II/ From the sociology of the counter to the legal capacitation of the layman. The sociology produced by Alexis Spire has been interested in the relationship of vulnerable people, laymen facing the administration, representing expertise and dominant doxa. It is inscribed in what is called sociology of the counter where the objective is to understand the stakes of relations in a face-to-face between a claimant and an administrative agent or a legal expert. His investigations have focused on the administrative treatment of foreigners, but also the issue of class relationships with fiscal administrations. [...]

[...] The use of the terms ordinary and layperson implies the underlying opposition expert-layperson or the relationship to justice would in fact be inscribed in a relationship of domination where the one who takes legal action is faced with inequalities of access to justice. Furthermore, the authors emphasize the need to observe the paths through the lenses of social characteristics. In fact, evoking the practices and representations of laypeople is above all to recognize the shortcomings in knowledge of the judicial system and the stereotypes surrounding the judicial system. [...]

[...] The analysis of the article by Camille Herlin-Giret and Alexis Spire allows us to question the social representations in the judicial process of any applicant who is poorly equipped with knowledge of the law and procedures. Through the use of intermediaries of the law, victims of financial real estate scams were able to quickly find themselves disarmed and totally disillusioned with the outcome of the little recognized prejudice. It is in this way that the layperson finds themselves in some way hostage to the experts without mastering their judicial destiny and ends up sometimes observing their request from a distance as being little legitimate. [...]