Grounded in interpretive theory and offering interdisciplinary
insights from sociological, psychological, and gender studies, this
book addresses the question - How do professional, lay, and gendered
actors understand and experience case processing in litigation and
mediation? Drawing on data from 131 interviews, questionnaires, and
observations of plaintiffs, defendants, lawyers, and mediators
involved in 64 fatality and medical injury cases, the book
challenges dominant understandings of how formal legal processes and
dispute resolution work in practice. In juxtaposing actors’
discourse on all sides of ongoing cases on issues such as
expectations, needs, comprehensions of what plaintiffs seek from the
legal system, objectives for mediation, and perceptions of what
occurs during attempts at case resolution, the findings reveal
inherent problems with the core workings of the legal system. By
providing in-depth views on the micro-elements of case processing,
the book uncovers important issues about formal and informal
justice, the inextricability of disputants’ legal and extra-legal
needs, and current paradigms relating to professional, lay, and
gendered identities.
Tamara
Relis
Email: t.relis@lse.ac.uk
Room: New Academic Building 6.02
Tel. 020-7955-7253
Dr Tamara Relis is a British Academy Research Fellow in the Law Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is presently conducting a large-scale three-year empirical study on formal court and informal justice processing of human rights violation cases of violence against women in India. Prior to taking up her present appointment, Dr Relis was the recipient of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Award for 2005/06 in support of the publication and dissemination of her doctoral findings. Dr Relis has also been a research fellow at Columbia University Law School in New York subsequent to having been awarded a Columbia University (Provost’s Office) & LSE Seed Fund Publishing Award relating to a collaborative project with Prof Kendall Thomas (Columbia Law School, Center for Law and Culture) and Prof Simon Roberts (LSE). Previously, Dr Relis taught two LL.B courses in the Law Department. Dr Relis holds a PhD in law from the LSE law department. Her thesis is now a book, published by Cambridge University Press (2009). Dr Relis obtained an LL.M degree with Merit, specialising in procedural law from the LSE (1998) and an LL.B degree in law from the University of London (1995). She is a barrister, with experience in trial court practice (called to the Bar 2002) as well as having qualified as a solicitor (called to the Roll 1998), working primarily in litigation after completion of the College of Law Legal Practice Course with Commendation (1996).
Research interests
Won a large 3-year research grant from the British Academy to study how international human rights laws and norms have permeated formal courts and informal justice processing (lok adalats, panchayats, & exported forms of American case management mechanisms) of violence against women cases in South Asia.
WORK-IN-PROGRESS - Drawing upon interdisciplinary
scholarship (international relations, law & anthropology, law & development,
and victimology literatures), my research questions how the current
proliferation of international human rights has shaped case processing
systems at grassroots levels. Consequently, I am conducting legal empirical
research on international human rights violation cases of violence against
women, processed in formal courts and informal justice mechanisms in seven
regions of India—comparing these with Western legal and extra-legal
processes. Subsequent to several fieldwork trips the dataset consists of
over 400 interviews, questionnaires and case hearing observations in 8
languages, covering 7 states. The United Nations Development Program, law
school Deans, domestic judges, state legal services authorities, local
district and high courts, NGO’s and human rights/public interest lawyers
have been involved in the project. Expanding upon my North American findings
in my book (2009), I juxtapose legal, lay and gendered actors’
understandings, aims and experiences within the same cases (victims,
accused, lawyers, judges, mediators) to provide local perspectives on
non-western models of formal courts and informal justice processes as forms
of legal pluralism. I examine how, if at all, international human rights
laws and norms (e.g. CEDAW 1979, ICCPR 1976, UN Declaration on Basic
Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power 1985) have
permeated the processing of these cases, comparing how receptive the
different spaces of lower courts versus quasi-legal regimes are to claims
made from the international sphere. I further examine the theoretical ideas
informing these processes (e.g. norm diffusion theory, universalism versus
cultural relativism, restorative justice, and feminist critiques of
mainstream human rights paradigms) and how these ideas are understood by
those on the ground.
This research is broad-based and covers the areas of
international human rights law, criminal law, civil/criminal procedure,
lawyer and client studies, comparative law, ADR and gender and the law.
Her broad research areas fall into 3 categories
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international human rights law and norms and their domestic permeation in formal courts and informal justice mechanisms
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broader theoretical questions relating to discontinuities inherent in doctrinal and procedural law as compared with how law and legal processes are understood and experienced in different contexts and cultures by state and non-state actors.
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law and development; legal pluralism
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Dr Relis is not presently engaged in teaching as she is in the midst of a three-year fully funded research project. In May 2006 she served as Lecturer and Resource Faculty Member at the Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik, Croatia (through the University of Tubingen, Germany and the University of Zagreb) for the duration of the World Victimology Society 22nd Postgraduate Course on Victimology and Criminal Justice.
