ABSTRACT
The exemplary or paradigmatic studies we have selected for this part of the collection are intended to illustrate some of the key research questions pursued by ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts in studying law. Inevitably, some important and well-known studies are missing, for example, the work of Sudnow, Bittner, Garfinkel and Wieder, summarized by John Manzo in the previous chapter, as well as pieces of research which will be unfamiliar to academics working in the fields of sociology of law and criminology, but are highly regarded within ethnomethodology (for example, Pollner's 1974 analysis of "explicative transactions" in a traffic court). In this introduction, I will refer to some of this wider literature, but my main concern will be to explain what is ethnomethodological about these studies, and how they provide a distinctive contribution to the study of law.
