ABSTRACT
Others have remarked upon the failure of a ‘dialectical’ approach to popular justice because of its ‘mechanistic’ character (Cain, 1985; Fitzpatrick, 1987). Spitzer’s work exemplifies the genuine problem of what a dialectical approach means and how it can overcome Weberian and other dichotomies. It will not be enough either to paint form and substance, or the formal and informal, with the colours of history and politics, or simply to invert one’s political viewpoint – to shift one’s commitment from ‘form’ to ‘substance’. We need to develop and apply a mode of dialectical analysis that forgoes antinomialism if we are to progress. In this section, I begin by outlining in schematic fashion what a concept of dialectic means, and then move to consider in the following sections what role it can play in a theory of the formal and informal, law and popular justice. As I have already stated, the key to unlocking popular or informal justice will eventually be found in an understanding of its Weberian antonym, legal formalism.
