All institutions concerned with the process of judging - whether it be deciding between alternative courses of action, determining a judge’s professional integrity, assigning culpability for an alleged crime, or ruling on the credibility of an asylum claimant - are necessarily directly concerned with the question of doubt. By putting ritual and judicial settings into comparative perspective, in contexts as diverse as Indian and Taiwanese divination and international cricket, as well as legal processes in France, the UK, India, Denmark, and Ghana, this book offers a comprehensive and novel perspective on techniques for casting and dispelling doubt, and the roles they play in achieving verdicts or decisions that appear both valid and just.

Broadening the theoretical understandings of the social role of doubt, both in social science and in law, the authors present these understandings in ways that not only contribute to academic knowledge but are also useful to professionals and other participants engaged in the process of judging. This collection will consequently be of great interest to academics researching in the fields of legal anthropology, ritual studies, legal sociology, criminology, and socio-legal studies.

 

Contents:

Foreword, Antoine Garapon;

Introduction: technologies of doubt in law and ritual, Anthony Good, Daniela Berti and Gilles Tarabout;

Technicalities of doubting: temple consultations and criminal trials in India, Daniela Berti;

Judging destiny: doubt and certainty in Chinese divinatory rituals, Stéphanie Homola;

Religious uncertainty, astrology and the courts in South India, Gilles Tarabout;

When judges feel misjudged: encountering doubt in Ghanaian courts, Jan Budniok;

Doubt in action: the different times of doubt in French Assize courts, Véronique Bouillier;

‘The benefit of the doubt’ in British asylum claims and international cricket, Anthony Good;

In doubt: documents as fetishes in the Danish asylum system, Zachary Whyte;

Emotions as evidence: hearings in the French asylum court, Carolina Kobelinsky;

Afterword, Tobias Kelly;

Index.