Understanding legal rules not as determinants of behavior but as points
of reference for conduct, this volume considers the ways in which rules
are invoked, referred to, interpreted, put forward or blurred. It also
asks how both legal practitioners and lay participants conceive of and
participate in the construction of facts and rules, and thus, through
decisions, defenses, pleas, files, evidence, interviews and documents,
actively participate in law's life. With attention to the formulation of
notions such as person, evidence, intention, cause and responsibility in
the course of legal practices, Legal Rules in Practice provides the
outlines of a praxiological anthropology of law - an anthropology that
focuses on words, concepts and reasoning as actively used to solve
conflicts with the help of legal rules. As such, it will appeal to
sociologists, anthropologists and scholars of law with interests in
ethnomethodology, rule-based conduct and practical reasoning.