Thomas Scheffer – författare

Das Jahrbuch Soziale Interaktion bietet dem Forschungs- und Denkstil des Symbolischen Interaktionismus im deutschen Sprachraum eine Plattform. Seit den 1970er Jahren liegen die entsprechenden Referenztexte von George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman oder Anselm Strauss in Übersetzung vor.

Cases are not objects at hand for legal decision-making; cases are not echoes from a past crime. Cases are, first of all, made within compound discourse apparatus, here the English Crown Court and the procedure/s attached to it. This book reveals the legal production of cases including their relevant features. The socio-legal ethnography visits the natural sites of adversarial case-making: law firms, barristers’ chambers, and Crown Courts. It examines the role and dynamics of client-lawyer meetings, pre-trial hearings, plea bargaining sessions, and jury trials. It focuses on the lawyers’ case-making activities, their procedural contexts, and the resulting cases. As an ethnographic discourse study, the book develops a trans-sequential perspective on the interrelated events and processes of case-making – and by doing so, overcomes the shortcomings of talk-bias and text-bias. The trans-sequential approach pays out in detailed case studies on an alibi, on guilt, or the barrister’s notes; it pays out as well in cross-case studies dealing with legal care, procedural infrastructure, or the case system in the common law tradition.