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Social & Legal Studies
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Critique of Abel on Popular Justice and the Alexandra Treason Trial

John Hund

Rhodes University, South Africa

Popular justice as a field of study is marked by profound conceptual confusion and is regarded by many as an imbroglio of misunderstanding. In this critique I present reasons for believing that this problem has its roots in Richard L. Abel's influential theory of `informal justice'. I show that this term as used by Abel is a logically confused malapropism for popular justice which is based on a fundamental category mistake that vitiates his definitional apparatus (his `general theory') of popular justice from top to bottom. This critique shows that his self-styled `contradictions of informal justice' are artefacts of his own general theory of popular justice and are not based on anything inherently contradictory in the nature of popular justice itself. An additional criticism is that Abel's general theory is a one-sided `lawyer's theory' of justice which excludes by definitional fiat the most basic kind of popular justice of all. This critique concludes by showing how these defects along with other factors have caused Abel to fundamentally misconstrue the Alexandra Treason Trial and to obscure the roles played by popular justice and sociology in this important South African jurisprudential event.

Key Words: Alexandra Treason Trial • extra-state law • informal justice • popular justice • revolutionary justice • self-help justice

Social & Legal Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, 475-489 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0964663908097081
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