The Common Place Of Law

To me the most interesting thing about Ewick and Silbey's research was the fact that they made a very conscious effort to study how they average resident of New Jersey is influenced by the law, and furthermore, how those individuls believe they are influenced by the law. I italicize average because it would seem that most studies of this type look at people who are somehow already involved in the legal system, whether that be through their occupation or being brought into the courts, and then they simply attempt to acknowledge their biased sample in order to justify it. This instead involved a very in depth look at a decent-sized random sample of citizens. Also, the inclusion of their summarized interviews was a very nice break from the academic writing that existed as the meat of the book. It gave a welcome respite from the difficult reading, and gave me a chance to just relax a little as if reading a story.

The one weakness that stood out to me most in the book however, was the fact that outside of the introduction they shyed away from the fact that study took place strictly in New Jersey. They failed to acknowledge that their conclusions could very possibly be geographically focused, especially in a field that varies so much state to state.