Doing Justice and Demonstrating Fairness in Small Claims Arbitration

Abstract

This paper examines the intersection of technical law and common sense reasoning in small claims arbitration, a distinctive and increasingly prevalent kind of legal work. Following (Garfinkel, Ethnomethodology'

Garfinkel, Harold (1917–2011)

“…From the late 1970s onward, Garfinkel encouraged his students to investigate specialized domains of scientific, professional, or technical practice and to conduct 'hybrid studies of work' that would cross traditional academic boundaries, forming the basis for interdisciplinary crossfertilization between EM and other disciplines (Burns, 2001(Burns, , 2009Livingston, 1986;Lynch, 1985Lynch, , 1993Macbeth, 1996Macbeth, , 2012. As part of Garfinkel's 'unique adequacy requirement of methods,' several of his students attempted to master the technical practices of particular fields of inquiry before explicating their local organization, raising the question of whether researchers must 'go native' to be able to understand and know how to produce/reproduce the materially detailed work constituting a specific domain of scientific, technical, or professional practice.…”

“…Garfinkel also diverged from Schutz's treatment of science and other practical action as governed by distinctive cognitive norms (Lynch, 1993: pp. 140-141) and demonstrated the intertwining of scientific (or technical/professional) knowledge and expertise with commonsense knowledge and competencies (e.g., Burns, 2001Burns, , 2009.…”