Between Chiefs and Courts: Legal Pluralism and Access to Justice in Post-Conflict South Sudan

Between Chiefs and Courts: Legal Pluralism and Access to Justice in Post-Conflict South Sudan examines the coexistence of customary, statutory, and international legal orders that allocate justice unequally across gender, class, and locality. The article places South Sudan at the centre of the analysis, but it resists treating the case as uniquely exceptional or analytically sealed off from wider African and global debates. Instead, it brings Legal pluralism (Griffiths; Merry; Benda-Beckmann); transitional justice and customary law (Huyse & Salter; Clark on Gacaca); post-colonial jurisprudence (Mamdani). Examines the coexistence of statutory, customary, and international legal frameworks in South Sudan and their differential accessibility to different social groups. into one conversation and develops the concept of layered legality to explain how formal norms, institutional design, and practical struggles over authority become fused. Using Legal ethnographic fieldwork at community courts in Bor, Rumbek, Wau, and Yambio; analysis of court records and case outcomes; interviews with chiefs, women litigants, lawyers, and UNMISS Rule of Law advisors; comparative analysis with customary law reform in Liberia, Kenya, and Mozambique., the paper reconstructs three linked propositions. First, it shows that navigating tripartite legal orders. Second, it demonstrates that gendered exclusion inside customary justice. Third, it argues that institutional reform without delegitimising local justice. The paper answers the central puzzle posed by the research agenda—how do south sudanese communities navigate a tripartite legal landscape — customary law administered by chiefs, statutory law in magistrate courts, and international human rights standards — and how do gender, ethnicity, and