ABOUT BOOK

The introduction of village courts in Papua New Guinea in 1975~ was an ambitious experiment in providing semi-formal legal access to the~ country's overwhelmingly rural population. Nearly 50 years later, the~ enthusiastic adoption of these courts has had a number of ramifications, some of~ them unanticipated. Arguably, the village courts have developed and are working~ exactly as they were supposed to do, adapted by local communities to modes and~ styles consistent with their own dispute management sensibilities. But with~ little in the way of state oversight or support, most village courts have~ become, of necessity, nearly autonomous. Village courts have also become the~ blueprint for other modes of dispute management. They overlap with other sources~ of authority, so the line between what does and does not constitute a~ 'court’ is now indistinct in many parts of the country. Rather than casting~ this issue as a problem for legal development, the contributors to Grassroots~ Law in Papua New Guineaask how, under conditions of state withdrawal, people~ seek to retain an understanding of law that holds out some promise of either~ keeping the attention of the state or reproducing the state’s authority.