Courts of Law and Legal Practice

DOI: 10.1002/9781444390599.ch19International audienceAlthough law courts in India still carry characteristics of their colonial origin, judicial concepts and court proceedings have evolved so as to adapt to the specificity of Indian society and its many other judiciary systems. In these legal settings, where hierarchy and codes of behavior are based on official roles and bureaucratic formalities, one may observe the interactions between state power and local society at work in routine practice throughout the country, even in the smallest towns and district headquarters. For the most part, however, anthropologists have neglected the study of these institutions, which has been largely taken up by jurists, lawyers and legal experts. As a result, most of the work on the judiciary in India is more concerned with the normative judicial system than with the practice of law itself. When social scientists discuss the professional services of lawyers, prosecutors, judges – for example, how lawyers give legal advice and represent clients in legal negotiation – and courts proceedings such as law suits court, it is often to denounce some malfunction or to propose solution