Le travail de l'audience one ethnographie des juges de proximite en action

Abstract

This paper aims to describe the asymmetric interactions between lawyers and lay people in courtrooms. The hearings are an interesting environment where we can observe these interactions between experts and lay people. The research is based on the 20 hearings of the "Juges de Proximite" in courtrooms in southern France counting over sixty hours of observation in five different courts. The "Juges de Proximite" were created in 2003. They are non-professional judges who have the law graduation. They treat small civil claims and the misdemeanors. The main goal is to provide a thick description of these interactions for analyze with the ethnomethodological point of view.. As a result, I could describe a reflexive activity between lawyers and lay people. In one hand, the lawyers explain the law in ordinary language while the lay people make a struggle to understand the legal assessments for practical purposes. This activity is possible due to the capacity of creating cognitive tools using contextual accounts. Finally, the court hearings work allows observing how the law is accomplished with the cognitive tools which are developed by the interactions of lawyers and lay people.