Critique of Abel on Popular Justice and the Alexandra Treason Trial
| Author | John Hund |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663908097081 |
| Date | 01 December 2008 |
| Published date | 01 December 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
CRITIQUE OF ABEL ON
POPULAR JUSTICE AND THE
ALEXANDRA TREASON TRIAL
JOHN HUND
Rhodes University, South Africa
ABSTRACT
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
ABEL’SCATEGORY MISTAKE AND HIS FALLACIOUS CONCEPT
OF INFORMAL JUSTICE
ABEL FREQUENTLY uses the expressions ‘informal justice’, ‘informalism’
and ‘informality’ as equivalent to, and interchangeable with, what
most contributors to The Politics of Informal Justice (Abel, 1982), and
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC,
www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 17(4), 475–489
DOI: 10.1177/0964663908097081
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