Weapons of the wronged

In societies characterized by legal pluralism, plural justice is especially perceptible (Baczko 2021; Benda-Beckmann, Benda-Beckmann, and Wiber 2006; Lund 2020; Merry 1991; Tamanaha 2021). When different normative repertoires overlap and contradict each other, there is often competition over jurisdiction in terms of substance, hierarchy, and rights subjects. What justice is, then, depends on where in the plurality of legal fields the question is asked, and what is considered fair in one context or society may seem outrageous in another (Bohannan 1966). For example, governments, colonial and post-colonial alike, have often imposed laws of property that have effectively rendered people landless because they had no valid proof of ownership (Banner 2005; Benton 2002; Bhandar 2018; Guha 1997; Lev 1985; Mamdani 2020; Merry 1991; Mitchell 2002). When the powerful move concrete conflicts from one jurisdiction or legal arena to another, common people’s ideas of justice become irrelevant and invisible in the face of the imposition of imported statutory law, and the scales of justice tilt law toward oppression (Benda-Beckmann 1981; Benton 2001; Lund 2025). People may have been expropriated according to law, but they have hardly been afforded justice.