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 and how they distribute justice unevenly across gender, class, and locality. Centering South Sudan without treating it as exceptional, the study situates the case within broader debates in legal pluralism, transitional justice, and post-colonial jurisprudence. It develops the concept of layered legality to explain how overlapping legal systems, institutional arrangements, and struggles over authority shape access to justice. Drawing on legal ethnographic fieldwork in 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; and comparative insights from Liberia, Kenya, and Mozambique, the study advances three linked propositions. First, communities actively navigate a tripartite legal order rather than relying on a single system. Second, customary justice often reproduces gendered exclusion despite its accessibility. Third, institutional reform is most effective when it engages rather than delegitimizes local justice practices. The analysis addresses the central question of how different social groups access and move between customary, statutory, and international legal frameworks, and how gender, ethnicity, and class shape these pathways. It shows that legal systems, narratives, and institutional practices function as political instruments rather than neutral mechanisms. The study concludes that justice reforms fail when they attempt to replace plural systems without addressing underlying inequalities, and it identifies pathways for more inclusive and context-sensitive approaches