ABSTRACT
Drawing on more than two decades of engagement on the Marshall Islands, including intense collaboration with the Public Advocate for the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal as well as with members of the local Rongelap community and other anthropologists and legal representatives, the author discusses how the anthropology–law intersect often extends to ethically challenging work as action-researcher, counsellor, collaborator, strategist, fundraiser, public commentator, and advocate in ways that influence and shape legal practice. The overlapping of these roles can lead to what she calls ‘friction’, which has both destructive and creative potential. Such friction occurred within the team of cultural experts brought in to help the Rongelap community in their claim for property and consequential damages, and reflected differing notions of the ethical responsibilities associated with disciplinary praxis. While the friction was difficult to resolve, doing so resulted in a ‘public-interest anthrolegal praxis’, in which the distinction between anthropologist and lawyer, and indeed between claimant, legal practitioner, cultural advisor, and expert witness became blurred and where collaboration and collective endeavour generated opportunities for otherwise diverse actors to work as a team in the investigation, documentation, articulation of findings, and, ultimately, advocacy for remediative and restorative justice.
