ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the professed reasons for interest in informal alternatives to courts, develops a model of disputing in society that seeks to show the similarities between formal and informal legal institutions as modes of neutralizing conflict. It utilizes that the model to assess the political significance of contemporary concern with informalism. The chapter examines the claims that advocates of informal justice make for its differences from, and advantages over, formal legal institutions. Classic liberalism is the ideology of the revolutionary phase of capitalism, whereas positivism is the ideology of capitalism triumphant. The interest in informalism rests upon attitudes toward conflict and litigation that are ambivalent, perhaps even hypocritical. In conservative conflict, the normative order is fully shared by both parties, exhaustive, and internally coherent. Liberating conflict, as an ideal type, displays no role differentiation: there are no intermediaries; parties are unrepresented, internally homogeneous, and non-hierarchical.
