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Community Justice as Contemporary Reality :

Bases for an Analysis of Public Policies
Edgar Ardila Amaya*

This article notes that the mechanisms of community justice are the result of varied and even antagonistic social dynamics. While the appraisal thats made and the expectations these generate tend to be positive, there is concern that they may turn into a factor for reproducing and accentuating social inequalities or that they may serve to co-opt any in-depth transformation of society. The author, who has worked in this field for several years and favors the promotion of mechanisms of community justice, proposes different possibilities for the analysis, an understanding of the relation between the context in which the current emergence of varied instruments of community justice and the role they may play in the transformation of society. The bottom-line is to clarify why and to what extent processes of community justice may participate in a dynamic of progressive transformation in our societies . To this end, the author explores the identifying elements of the politicolegal scenario in which the contemporary dynamics of community justice are inscribed and analyzes the factors that cause their expansion while suggesting the ways in which the tendencies presented by the administration of justice in community settings interact with the political wagers that converge in the current processes of this type of justice.

The assessment of and expectations for the mechanisms of community justice tend to be positive. The authors who refer to the concept in general, or to different forms in particular, start from different perspectives yet tend to paint a picture of a suitable path for improving the administration of justice. In Colombia, community justice always gets off easy when it is presented as a more or less efficient alternative to the dynamics of generalized violence or to the gaps in the judicial system. There are numerous and varied advantages attributed to it. Some staunchly maintain that it is cheaper, quicker, more efficient and more accessible than the justice offered by the judicial system. Others use solid arguments to claim that it helps in the construction of peace or, at least, in thwarting people from resorting to direct violence as a way of resolving disputes. Nobody appears to be in a position to firmly and definitively adopt a negative position vis-vis these mechanisms. Nonetheless, there have been several voices of caution regarding certain worrisome elements, especially with regard to the mass promotion of the mechanisms of community justice in recent years. For example, the fact that many cases of community justice lack the balancing mechanisms present in the judicial system means that community justice may contribute to the reproduction and accentuation of social inequities, which should be cause for concern. It is also disturbing that these mechanisms can also limit the transformations at the social base, since they can prevent the different underlying interests in the conflict from joining, maturing and gath-

Professor of Law, National Univ ersity of Colombia. Member of the Red de Justicia Comunitaria (Network for Community Justice).

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ering forces. One must caution that ultimately [these mechanisms] could end up as a veiled modality for the expansion of the central power structures through forms that are autonomous only in appearance. I am a supporter of the push toward mechanisms of community justice, as evidenced by several years of work in this field. But that does not mean that I fail to consider these disturbing elements, nor does it lead me to determine that the mechanisms of community justice are positive for society as a whole. I hold that the mechanisms of community justice are the result of diverse and in many cases antagonisticsocial dynamics. Community justice can transform or conserve society and, as a factor in social change, can participate both in broader processes of regressive transformation and in the progressive transformation of social relations. With the aim of analyzing the different possibilities, this text seeks to propose a path toward a greater understanding of the relationship that theoretically exists between the current context in which the various instruments of community justice are implemented, and the role that these might play in the transformation of society. The fundamental question is to clarify why and to what extent processes of community justice might contribute to a dynamic of progressive transformation in our societies. With this immediate aim, this text attempts to explore the element that might identify the political-legal setting in which the contemporary dynamics of community justice are described. In so doing, we are both analyzing the factors which may cause the expansion of mechanisms of community justice, and reflecting on the ways in which the trends in the administration of justice interact in community arenasboth based on a reflection on the political strategies which converge in the current processes of community justice.

A NEW ERA IN COMMUNITY JUSTICE

The most visible part of this stage of the administration of justice can be perceived in the following three points: (1) In the first place, the change of conflict intervention strategies on the part of the state system; (2) secondly, the diversification and expansion of mechanisms outside of the state which participate in the processes of justice administration and regulation; (3) finally, the formal retraction of the state from certain realms of the administration of justice. With regard to the first aspect, the changes in state-based conflict intervention are manifest in the multiplication both of the state bodies which are called upon for this purpose, as well as in the methods for addressing controversies brought before such bodies. The former occurs because the judicial system is continually ceding ground to other state bodies, mainly to the executive branch.1 As methodologies for dealing with some conflicts multiply, state intervention incorporates procedures that are based on the consensus of the parties involved and focus on the construction of the social fabric;2 meanwhile other conflicts remain subject to judicial procedures and submitted to the decision of a judge according to the law. With regard to this second aspect, there is also diversification and expansion of the actors in conflict regulation and management who operate both within and apart from the state system.

With regard to the executive branch, there is a wide range of actors who are involved in the field of conflict, from police authorities to governmental actors. The administration uses various agents to intervene in conflicts ranging from the purely private, individual type, to those which are collective by nature and of the public interest. Moving beyond the generalized model of conflict intervention adopted by the states administrative bodies, the adaptation of judicial procedures occurs primarily in two ways. On the one hand, informal procedures are incorporated into the task of the formal administration of justice, principally as a pre-tr ial process that is, in many cases, ob ligatory. This strategy has been most developed in the fields of family and labor law, although it has also been attempted in criminal law. On the other hand, in cer tain types of cases, ne w mechanisms are created with an entirely new procedural structure.

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Thus, mechanisms with organic ties to business sectors increasingly participate in conflict managementwith an unprecedented presence in all areas, from the local to the transnational, and in aspects ranging from general regulation to the negotiation of particular conflicts. In the same vein, new forms of managing criminal justice are being implemented which attempt to prioritize reconciliation over punishment, but still under the direction of the state judicial system. There are also, of course, the instruments of conflict management which stem from community and social movements, which gain extra momentum at this stage. With regard to the third aspect, the state is retreating from several realms of justice administration, formally ceding ground that it cannot practically control. Due to this phenomenon (although not in any mechanistic or necessary way), non-state mechanisms for justice administration and regulation find fertile ground to take root and grow. The state sets up a complex relationship with these mechanisms, which cannot be fully considered a substitute of the state system by another regulatory system nor the simple transformation of state structures. In the following sections I offer some elements of analysis which may help us to approach the complexity of these changes. In the first place, to attempt to understand the interplay between the different regulatory principles in the new processes of justice administration and, in the second place, to understand how the new processes operate in the regulatory realms that are currently recognized in our societies.

PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE ADMINISTRATION AND REGULATION

The complexity of these changes can be better understood if we first understand what precedes and surrounds them. In order to do so, we rely on the existing theoretical tools. In his most recent work, Boaventura de Souza Santos (2000) proposes a conceptual construction with which to understand modern societies in general and the administration of justice in particular. Paraphrasing the professor from Coimbra, we could say that the paradigm of modernity is complex and full of internal contradictions. That is, it does not easily submit to logic. On the contrary, is can be understood as the interwoven and competing confluence of three principles of regulation: the principle of the state, the principle of the market, and the principle of the community. 3 The first is defined as the vertical political obligation between the state and the citizenry, the principle of the market is the horizontal and antagonistic relationship between commercial agents, and the principle of the community is the horizontal relationship based on the solidarity between members of a common environment of unity and belonging. The most renowned authors of each of these regulatory principles are easily identifiable. While the state-based principle of regulation recognizes first and foremost Hobbes, in the principle of the market we find Locke, and in the principle of the community, Rousseau. All of these focus on freedom as the corresponding principle to regulation. For Rousseau (1983: 27ff), freedom is part of human nature and is only realized in the social context in which the community fulfills its collective interests. In Locke (1995: 36-ff.; 52) and in Smith, what determines freedom is simply the possibility to choose. For Hobbes (1994: 215-ff.), freedom is determined by what the state allows an individual to do; the citizen is free within the realm of what the state allows. It is therefore necessary to point out that even though the state is the fundamental factor of organization and rationalization within its territory, it is not the only entity regulating social relations. The well-known phrase the invisible hand of the market highlights the fact that in modern societies the regulatory capacity of the market has always existed. Underlying Adam Smiths proposal is the fact that the market continually regulates social relations. And, to the extent that they are submitted to principle of the markets, these very relations are regulated by the dominant fac-

Here I partially (in order to temporarily avoid delving into the pillar of emancipation) take up the system of analysis widely developed by Boaventura de Souza Santos (Santos 2000).

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tors which the market is able to regulate in a way that is complementary, competitive or alternative to state regulation. As we will see below, this is especially apparent in contemporary societies that undergo a process of the state retreating from regulation in multiple sectors. This is supposedly the phenomenon of deregulation, but in reality what is occurring is a process of commercial regulation. The state retreats, but instead of the deregulation of social relations, what generally occurs is that market norms take its place. Market norms become the dominant norms. And when this involves an oligopolistic market such as currently exists in many realms, the rights which previously existed in the realm of state regulation start to be transformed into services, and what we once had as guarantees disappear simply because we cease to be citizens and instead become customers. If we are not citizens, we do not have rights. As customers we have other prerogatives that do not allow one to obligate another to satisfy his or her interest, as is allowed under the principle of the state. The community also acts as a principle of regulation and has been present throughout all of modernity, determining broader or narrower sets of social relations surrounding conflict. A fundamental element of community cohesion is having rules. If one loses a sense of what is correct and does not know what is good and what is bad, one starts to lose his or her human nature. It might be said that culture is human nature. In this sense, each community has its own nature. Taking the rules away from a community would be equivalent to taking away its nature because it means telling the community to be something that it is not. Community building is, to a great extent, about regulation. Rules are the skeleton of a culture. The skeleton is not the animal, yet without it, the animal could not exist. And to the extent that a community has the possibility of self-regulation, it can produce its own identity. It is also through rules that the complementary dynamic of belonging is established. The meaning of belonging is linked to being submitted to the rules of the group to which one belongs. My initiation into a group consists in my submission to the rules of that group. In this sense, the self-management of conflict through cultural linkages is a form of community building. Very extensive social environments (with intense dynamics surrounding identity and belonging) and very broad relational groupings (with relatively greater weight on non-state-based identity dynamics) have always relied on the principle of community to determine conflict relations and management. In concrete contexts, systems of social regulation have to be read as the convergence of the principle of community with the principles of the state and the market. This is so often the case that even in the most politically and economically integrated sectors, most conflict is resolved according to the principle of the community, even when state norms are invoked to solve the case. In spite of this, the regulatory capacity of the principle of the community has suffered a process of undermining throughout modernity, to the extent that a constant process of urbanization is underway and the presence of the mass media has intensified in daily life. The community has always been secretive about regulating what is defined as unimportant in terms of the modern context. Its place has always been defined as subordinate or redundant in the face of the other principles of regulation, even though it is always called on to play a legitimating role. The market has interacted in many ways with the principle of the state as a determinant factor in social regulation. Apart from the present era, in the 19th century the market enjoyed high levels of predominance in most Western countries. Yet the principle of the state has been the axis of the paradigm. This principle is the basis for the discussion over social order and organization, while the other two principles participate in a complementary or competitive way in the establishment of the rules that determine social behavior. Yet the relationship between the three principles and the set of dynamics around regulation tend to change fundamentally in the current era. As a consequence, we can see substantial changes in the administration of justice with regard to the principles of regulation. To the same extent that the principle of the state is receding in the face of the advance of the other two principles, their operating logics and the factors that make up these principles act as vectors for the conflict management that generally occurs in modern society.

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The administration of justice is differentially affected by each of the three principles. The vector of the principle of the state operates in the direction of sovereignty and legal certainty; the vector of the principle of the market is directed toward the generation of appropriable individual gains, and the vector of the principle of the community is oriented toward identity and belonging. With this analytical framework, we can explain the concepts of legal certainty and sovereignty, which are central to the modern conception of justice and which are intensely affected by the current stage. State law is tending to lose efficiency as a mechanism for assigning rights, and as this base is weakened, the legal certainty offered by the modern order begins to totter. The reduced efficiency of the legal norm as a guide for social relations precipitates talk of a crisis of law; while the fact that the legal system is overwhelmed in its ability to deal with conflict precipitates discussion of a crisis in the administration of justice.4 With regard to the judiciary, the crisis is manifested in its structural inability to attend to all conflicts: the courts are congested, the processes are increasingly slower and impunity is on the rise. With regard to the legal system, the crisis is manifested in the inability of the law to resolve many conflicts. This is what has been termed the crisis of the paradigm of state monist legality (Wolkmer 1994: 91). Due to this crisis, many issues have come to be treated by the regime as extrajudicial.5 The illegitimacy of the judicial apparatus and the state legal system are manifested in the increasing tendency toward the use of outside mechanisms for conflict management. Under such conditions, to reduce the administration of justice to the judicial system and the law to the state, would be going against available evidence and would be entirely unrealistic. The statistics on impunity and legal inefficiency seem to show that the judicial system disappears from the scene in most social conflicts.6 This takes on even greater significance when the state is limited to offering purely symbolic protection on issues that might be of the highest interest for large sectors of society, 7 essentially gutting rights that are fundamental for the majority of the population.8 In practice, the state tends to concentrate its resources where the needs of capitalist accumulation require them. In a stage of globalized capital accumulation, [these resources] are increasingly controlled by vectors farther and farther beyond the control of national governments. This being the case, what we could characterize as a scenario of the full exercise of citizenship is deteriorating (Habermas 2000: 104) to the extent that the state finds itself ever more limited in its ability to guarantee the rights which establish its internal laws. There appear to be a series of overlapping causes for this, among which the following might be highlighted: (i) The tendency toward reduced efficiency of [civic] ties or links given the advancement of an individualistic
4

There are various texts on the crisis of the legal system that are particularly pertinent to this study: the first chapter of Bonaf (1991) and the work of Santos (1998B). In spite of the differences between them, those two works undertake an analysis of the elements that define the structural tension within legal conflicts with respect to the law and the legal system. For example, as Wolkmer points out, the most common strategy for removing collective issues from the legal sphere is to link non-judicial entitiessuch as those from the executive branch to the management of the conflict. The case of Spain, in which only one-fifth of all new cases seen in 1990 were resolved, may be indicative (Pastor 1993: 65). In this framework, Fara wonders about the Brazilian legal system: Within a highly complex, unequal and contradictor y society, in which a large par t of the population doubts the concept of reliability, could [the state] possibly have the technical, functional and institutional conditions necessary to assure its monopoly over conflict resolution? (Faria 1995: 85). As occurs in Colombia. Contrast the available information on the high level of impunity in homicide cases with the high levels of overpopulation of prisons (exceeding 300% of their capacity), which are increasingly occupied by those accused of drug trafficking and production, who have much less of an impact on Colombian society. Perhaps provoked by the confluence of three types of factors: (i) the dissolution of social, community, and association-based structures due to processes of urbanization, mig ration and transformation of productive spaces; (ii) the impact of the cultural work produced by the increasingly globalized mass media, and (iii) the development of technologies that foster work, consumption and leisure in conditions of isolation.

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attitude among sectors that have historically enjoyed the full exercise of citizenship;9 (ii) the orientation of public resources towards priorities defined to be outside the sphere of democratic institutions and increasingly independent of national borders; (iii) the search for competitiveness at the expense of public spending, which translates into the contraction of social spending and of some bureaucracy, whichamong other thingslimits the response that the judiciary can have to situations of conflict. Correspondingly, while this phenomenon of crisis in the state judiciary and in the administration of justice occurs within the realm of citizenship, it also produces noticeable effects in the other settings of social regulation. In the first place, because it excludes and marginalizes greater and greater sectors of society. In the second place, because the full incorporation of a broad segment of the population into the ranks of citizenship is substituted by an offer of limited citizenship in which only certain rights count in practiceprincipally the right to voteleaving the other rights relegated to the margins and subordinated to a politics of investment, fiscal equilibrium, competitiveness, and security. And it is to this margin that the legal defense of rights is confined. Thirdly, forms of conflict regulation and management that are developed in settings with their own, independent legal structures have a greater chance of being truly accessible media for guaranteeing communal living in different segments of society. [These forms] are potentially strengthened byamong other causesthe resurgence of identities and the flow of community dynamics which are becoming apparent in different parts of the world. Finally, the state is reconsidering its relationship to these forms of legal pluralism. In so doing, it is opening itself to ways of recognizing other forms of lawfulness and providing institutional, state-based validity to extra-state mechanisms and decentralizing the administration of justice to allow for the introduction of new actors. The new attitude of the political system, as we shall see, is defined by a path of adaptation to the new realities while taking care to rely on mechanisms that allow the state to remain in control.

DYNAMICS OF REGULATION, COMMUNITY, AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

In the previous section, I stated that strong tendencies can currently be identified which promote a retraction of the state as a principle of regulation. This retraction, as I have affirmed here, is expressed equally in the local, transnational and national. In the face of this retraction, there has been an expansion of the other principles of regulation. The market has broadened as a space of regulation and the community has expanded as well. An important, corresponding transformation is also occurring from an ideological perspectivethe state already recognizes that it is not the only regulating entity. It never has been the only entity, but it is only now that the state recognizes it. This represents an enormous shift in that the state now considers the need to link itself to the new reality. What the state is now attempting to do is to ensure that its means of regulationthough essentially modifiedremain as much as possible a central component in the complex dynamic of principles of social regulation and order. However, for many (for example Santos and Vallespin) this merely amounts to the state organizing its own retraction. The marketwhich is increasingly transnational at the cost of internal and national marketsis expanding and starting to occupy the dominant position. In each case the market has a different way of becoming the dominant factor in regulation. It is not simply that there is a broadening of the fields in which market rules are replacing state rules; rather, there are mechanisms through which commercial actors directly affect state policies and actions. To a certain extent, what the state bodies are doing is adjusting to the new reality in a primarily subordinated fashion. The communitywhich had been eclipsed as a principle of regulationfinds new strength in the current era to the extent that it appeals to identity-based ties to shape and enforce behavior by using the solidarity of those who feel that they are part of a common whole. Yet, the development

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of this strength is debated in terms of: its development as a principle of regulation, its development of the ties between the genuine needs of individuals and groups, the development of identity dynamics, and the development of the processes of self-regulation in the face of the needs imposed by the market and the state. The community is effectively expanding, but perhaps it is doing so not only based on the principle of community, but also perhaps interpenetrated with the state and principle of the markets. Hence, it is from this complex dynamic that the trends in the administration of justice must by read. The community appears to be a social realm regulated by the state. In this scenario, the state intensely interpenetrated by the marketputs limits on the community. Here we can see certain dynamics of decentralization and of participation that have been propelled since the 1970s, and which at this point define the community to a certain extent. [These include the ideas that] there are certain times for participation and certain ways in which to participate, and that one is a community member in order to have access to certain services, but not to make transcendent political decisions. The state regulates the gains in the communitys ability to manage itself. For example, the state limits its capacity to act in criminal cases and establishes fields in which the communitys self-regulation is proscribed, thereby recognizing a limited and subordinated capacity for self-regulation. In the judicial field, forms of administrative justice have been organized such that the communitys own structures tend to become an extension of the state regulatory structures, particularly of the states justice system. From the perspective of the principle of the state, the justice of the peace is a tool for the expansion of the state system and is presented as part of the judicial system. In effect, what would be a mechanism for community justice becomes a mechanism for the expansion of the state within the community using the communitys own structures. This is what Boaventura de Souza Santos calls the expansion of the state in the shape of civil society (Santos 1991: 139-140). The state appropriates the communitys own structures and, in so doing, changes the essence of the system of regulation. Hence, the notion that a substantial number of the mechanisms for community justice are actually mechanisms to accede to the administration of justice as a system. It is therefore believed that there is one system for the administration of justice, to which a certain sector of the populationthat sector catalogued as the communityhas access, which to a certain extent denies full citizenship. These members are offered a type of administration of justice that is reduced to conflict resolution. As such, it can offer no guarantees, no respect for human rights and appears to have no concern for the formal equality among parties that is demanded by formal justice, which seems to rely on a political link that is more precarious than citizenship. Nevertheless, and in spite of being managed by some non-state entities, what it does offer is an attempt to keep the process subordinated to the judicial system by establishing more or less efficient measures for keeping the process submitted to state law. From the market perspective, conflict can be seen as an area of the market in which demand for a product is generated. This product is the service of justice, which must be submitted to the rules of supply and demand and for which, therefore, the maximum value lies in productivity, which must necessarily be translated into efficiency in the production and distribution of the service. Hence, given a scenario in which a large company (the state judicial system) cannot sufficiently and adequately address a conflict in all of its forms, the need arises to increase the supply. In this sense, the increase in local and community mechanisms for the administration of justice can easily be associated with the dynamics of commercial decentralization in the diffusion of justice. The principle of the community can act as both a determinant of and a specific instance for the processes of the regulation of a specific social space. It functions as a determinant factor in that identity and belonging form the basis of conflict management and help to orient behavior. It works as a specific instance of the process in that the dynamics of social regulation are a path for the creation and recreation of feelings of identity and belonging. Under this principle, regulation is based on the relational fabric that both exists and is produced by this process.
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Starting from the principle of community, we must recognize the dynamics of widely varying intensity in which the more autonomous communities establish the norms and mechanisms that regulate them and serve to manage their conflicts. Yet, this does not mean that all of the dynamics of justice present in the community environment operate under [the community] principle. Even though we can use the principle of the community to speak of functional mechanisms of community justice, we could just as easily do the same thing based on the principle of the state or of the market. In each of the cases, the community actions may have a different meaning in terms of external regulation and self-regulation, heteronomy or autonomy, subordination or empowerment, the broadening of the state or the market and the development of the community.

THE NEW MAP OF REGULATION AND THE STRATEGIES IN COMMUNITY JUSTICE

The new map of regulation and the administration of justice is sketched according to the competitive or cooperative ways in which the different principles of regulation operate in different regulatory settings. Thus, the dynamics surrounding the development of mechanisms of community justice might be more intelligible if we analyze the political strategies that are pursued through them. I believe that each experience of community justice implies a combination of the principles of regulation, depending both on the specific contextual determinants and on the particularities in the definition of each setting of conflict management, such as the interaction between the actors in each case. Thus, our role in this part of the formulation is to identify the political strategies that might come together in a specific case and to relate them to the principles of regulation. Then, by analyzing each case in particular, we can evaluate how each of the different principles operates within it. An inventory of the principle political causes for the current development of mechanisms of community justice might spring from a combination of the following elements: communal coexistence, wholeness, the decongestion of legal channels, access, autonomy, identity or belonging. All of the political trends in community justice are based on at least one of these strategies and, in the majority of cases, a combination. Let us see what this entails.
Communal Living

Given that the immediate task of the administration of justice is the generation of conditions for peaceful coexistence among people who belong to a social environment, an attempt is made to guarantee that the mechanisms in place precisely meet this task. That is why two main paths have been preferentially chosen in the administration of justice: the imperative path and the constructive path. The first refers to justice as the rule of law. From this perspective, peaceful coexistence is the result of order and the administration of justice happens to be one of the principle ways of guaranteeing social order. Thus, its role is to specify, in each case, the norm that guarantees the enforcement of the legal order. The constructive path refers to the administration of justice as a mechanism for the construction and reconstruction of the social fabric. From this perspective, the existing legal norms are not a straight jacket, but rather a tool to be used alongside others to create conditions favorable to repairing those social vehicles affected by a situation of conflict. Thus, while the first paththe imperativelooks to the past to define who is acting according to what is ordered by law, the second path looks to the future to find a way to create more fluid [social] relations. The first pathwhich we here call imperativeis predominant in the modern West, and has revealed several important fissures. As a result, there is a search within mechanisms of community justice for modalities of constructive justice that offer better conditions for the production of coexistence. This search does not, in most cases, assume the substitution of one model of justice for another, but rather their articulation and complementarities with the ways of dealing with conflict that continue to be offered by the judicial system.

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Holistic Treatment of Conflicts

We have already noted the limits of state law in terms of giving a full account of socially relevant conflict. Such limits are manifested in both the impossibility of the state legal system to attend to non-legal conflicts, and in [the legal systems] approach to the non-legal dimension of those conflicts that are covered by the normative structure of state law. These are vectors that continually mark in an evident manner the limits of state mechanisms in the face of conflict, as well as the states declining ability to shape and order reality. In the face of this situation, we find the need to search within community justice for instruments not found in the states legal mechanisms that allow for a holistic treatment of conflict. A holistic approach to the treatment of conflicts can be achieved from two perspectives: specific and contextual. The first essentially relates to the way in which the parties involved directly manage their process and the behaviors that frame that process. Thus, beyond attending to the legal aspect of the conflict, it is also necessary to contemplate its economic, cultural, and other dimensions. On the other hand, from the contextual perspective, a holistic approach to conflicts does not simply contemplate these dimensions with regard to the parties involved, but also with regard to the social environment in which the conflict unfolds. From a cultural perspective, the conflict can neither be considered nor treated as independent of the social structures in which it exists. The mechanisms of community justice present themselves as an effective channel for the holistic treatment of conflicts given the fact that, in many cases, they rely on modes of intervention that allow for the penetration of different dimensions of the controversies (see Ardila 2000). However, of course, the practitioners [of mechanisms of community justice] range from those who concentrate more on inter-party conflict to those who intensely link the controversy and its treatment to the context in which they arise.
Decongestion of the Legal System

The legal system tends to be overwhelmed by the conflicts thataccording to the state legal normative structureit must attend. This trend is expressed in several ways: (1) The backlog of issues to be resolved, as expressed through the increasing rate of procedural delays; (2) increasing slowness in processing cases that are underway, which also results in many cases in inappropriate judicial decisions because the timing of the decision does not line up with the unfolding social reality; (3) the expansion of impunity, in which many of the rights guaranteed in criminal cases tend to receive only purely symbolic support from the state. In other words, the congestion of the judicial system means that those who execute legal justice are less and less able to respond to societal demands for conflict management and less able to provide the necessary legal aid to help uphold rights as a reality for the entire population of the state. Faced with this problem, one can recognize a very influential trend that promotes, among other things, the mechanisms of community justice as an adequate way to clear out the judicial offices. The creation and use of these mechanisms helps to relieve the pressure of conflict on judicial offices. In effect, it becomes necessary to transform the system of the administration of justice into [a system] which ties together different non-legal modalities (often called alternative mechanisms of conflict resolution), including the mechanisms of community justice. What this involves, then, is a division of the responsibilities surrounding conflict management between legal and other actors. This means that many of the conflicts covered by the states legal regulation come to be served by mechanisms of community justice.
Access to the Administration of Justice

The problem of access to the administration of justice is, ultimately, the problem of the effective guarantee of the rights established under the legal order. Without access to protection through the administration of justice system, the aid that the states legal structures offer to certain interests and which is part of the essence of citizenship becomes null and void.
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Nonetheless, there are certain reasons why judicial structures have historically lacked the conditions for offering access to more or less broad segments of society, and why the trend is getting worse. (1) One reason is geographical, in that the justice system is not able to locate itself at reasonable distances in order to attend to cases in areas far removed from the economic and political centers of power. (2) Another reason is economic, in that procedural costs are high (there are certain legal procedures that are prohibitively expensive for certain sectors of the population) and regressive (meaning that the poor end up paying more relative to their income). There are several types of expenses: those that the parties have to pay for the procedures themselves, the costs involved in terms of personal energy and work hours dedicated to following ones case, and those that, because of the [nature of] the judicial process, cease to be noticed (in which case the slowness of the process becomes more and more aggravating with each passing day). (3) A third reason is cultural in two respects: knowledge and identity. Knowledge of ones rights and how to protect them is not evenly distributed across society, meaning that for some sectors of society it is much harder to make use of the judicial system in order to protect ones interests. With regard to identity, here I will only mention the feelingso common in popular sectorsthat the law and the justice system are foreign and rely on incomprehensible logic and values. Different strategies have been developed to provide access to the administration of state justice, from the reorganization of the legal system to advocacy of popular legal education programs, to legal assistance programs of all ideological stripes. Regardless, to the extent that the gap between the processes of legalization and judicialization continues to grow, such strategies tend to become obsolete because they do not attend to the fundamental imbalance between the two. Thus, mechanisms of community justice are seen as tools that allow for geographical, economic and cultural access: geographical due to the proximity practitioners can have to the conflict; economic because the procedural costs can be reduced to ridiculously low levels, and cultural because the parties involved are more familiar with the procedures and rules used to manage conflicts in a community environment and can more easily identify with them.
Empowerment and Autonomy

The policies that advocate mechanisms of community justice tend to be located within fields that promote participation. Participation is identified as the opposite of representation in political action at different levels of public action. While in a representative system power is exercised by a minority in the name of the majority, in the participatory model, the majority takes part in the exercise of power. This being the case, it becomes important to estimate to what extent we can expect community practices of conflict management to empower people. There are three different settings in which power might feasibly develop: among the functionaries of justice, among the parties in dispute, and within the community. The functionaries of justice use the available mechanisms to develop some powers to affect the reality in which they operate, while simultaneously gaining the ability to be interlocutors with the outside world. The parties have the power to direct the management of the very conflicts that they themselves are involved in. They tend to act on their own behalf in matters of community justice and it is they whounder many mechanismsretain decisionmaking power throughout the process. The communities rely on forms of internal and external empowerment through the mechanisms of community justice: internal power is reflected in the ability to define the norms according to the ways in which their issues will be handled, as well as the ability to designate and control functionaries. At the external level, by acting more cohesively, developing dynamics of participation and controlling their own issues (Ingvesson 1993: 381-ff.) and by being able to guarantee all of this through their own mechanisms, communities gain strength for the advancement of their interests in other social environments, particularly vis--vis the state. This question of external power brings into consideration the problem of autonomy. Although mechanisms of community justice do assume the development of a certain autonomous power, it is

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worth wondering where that power lies. It is possible for the autonomy to lie within the community or to simply be in the mechanism. This is ultimately a question of who controls the mechanism. If the community itself controls it through its political structures, we might say that autonomy lies in the community. If [control] comes through legislation and state bodies, then we cannot properly talk about autonomy. If the community [controls the process] through diffuse mechanisms such as supply and demand, we might be faced with a mechanism that is very autonomous, but with little connection to existing structures.
Identity and Belonging

Community justice is also proposed as a tool for community-building. This derives from something that I have been defending since the beginning [of this text], which is that the structures of regulation are the skeleton of a community. That being the case, the production of collective identity (and, in each case, of individual identity) is the consequence of the construction and consolidation of norms that make each community unique with respect to other [communities]. To the extent that these norms are enacted and reproduced through mechanisms of community justice, they participate in identity production as sources of rules for a specific community in which such concepts have a place. In the same way, community justice can be seen as a tool for community-building, to the extent that it produces and reproduces a feeling of belonging. On the one hand is the excitement which is common to conflict management [when people recognize] those aspects that are common to both parties and which make them members of a larger whole. But also, as highlighted throughout this reflection, belonging to a group is related to acceptance of its norms. A person belongs to the community whose norms he recognizes and he expects that those norms are the basis from which issues will be considered and decided in matters of controversy. Belonging feeds community justice and community justice feeds [a sense of] belonging.

PRINCIPLES OF REGULATION AS THE BASIS FOR POLITICAL STRATEGIES IN COMMUNITY JUSTICE

Each one of the strategies that we have just seen can be the grounds for interaction between the principles of the state, market and the community. And if we wish to approach the mechanisms of community justice in all their richness, we cannot be unfamiliar with the complexity that they entail. Because, undoubtedly, the particularity of each mechanism is affected by the strategies that are developed around it, among other reasons because often the strategies change their essential meaning when determined by one principle or another. There are many strategies in which the central or near-exclusive presence of a single principle is easily identifiable. The state or community or market almost completely determines a bet and the other principles merely assist or dialogue with the dominant principle. Yet there are also strategies in which the three principles concurin different forms and often competitivelyas vectors that pull the mechanisms in different directions. The principles of regulation intervene in different ways when faced with the processes of community justice. The differences between one principle and another can be better understood if one takes into consideration the way in which strategies are made from each principle with a view towards the existing mechanisms of community justice. This seems like an extraordinary task, which it may well be. Yet, it seems to me that it is a path one must take in order to understand the uniqueness of each mechanism of community justice. This should not stop us from attempting an approximate sketch of some of the general elements of analysis that help us to study the interplay of vectors that influence each mechanism.

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Strategies and Principles of Regulation

Principle Bet State Market Subordination of non-legal Consolidation of a system orders to the state realm. of supply and demand in the service of justice. Subordination of constructive mechanisms to the state order. Accumulation of resolved conflicts. Community Development of the community through its regulatory structures. Construction of the social fabric. The social whole and the regulatory system. Comm unity.

Co-existence

Empowerment and Autonomy Identity and Belonging Holism Decongestion

The subordinated function- The parties. ary. Subordinated community. Codification of variables. Individual.

Treatment of the different Internal, contextual varivariables within the conflict. ables.

Broadening of the supply Reduction of issues to be of the administration of handled by the judiciary. Distribution of responsibili- justice. ties toward community justice. Increase in state-related resources of conflict management. Increase in resources of conflict management. Resources of justice administration according to community norms.

Access

Politics and Principles of Regulation

The first element is perhaps the most general and has the most to do with what we understand to be the politics of community justice. We start from the basis that an understanding of politics transcends the obligatory reference to the state and includes actions that can be explained from a market or community point of view, and which take on a new definition with regard to processes of regulation and conflict management in the current stage, which is characterized as a crisis in the administration of justice. Hence, in attempting an approximation of the trends that are defined by each of the principles of regulation, we can say that the development and expansion of the dynamics of community justice are explained as the complementary and competitive confluence of the three principles of regulation in the face of the most general processes of justice administration. This is characterized on the one hand by the exhaustion of a paradigm (through changes in the settings of regulation and the relationship between conflicts and litigation), and on the other hand by a change in context (through transformations in the spacing of power and of law as well as the ways in which resources for the administration of justice are socially assigned). The trends that can be explained using the principle of the state are largely directed toward helping the state to control social environments through the subordination of social orders that are not part of the states legality. The mechanisms of community justice are a shortcut to allow the state to grow in its capacity for regulating the dynamics that cannot be directly controlled by the instruments on which the state legality normally relies. Thus, faced with the reductionist and conformist rigidity of the normative structure of the political system, a model is erected in which the complicating diversity which is made possible through mechanisms of community justice, is subordinated and limited through legal regulation. The principle of the market-based trends that are found in the push toward community justice can be identified because they attempt to promote and consolidate a system of supply and demand

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in the service of justice. This translates into the subordination of the rules and practice of justice administration before the laws of the market. The identification of the service of justice administration with merchandise, the functionaries of justice as agents of the market and the parties of the conflict as users or consumers, assumes a direction which tends to impose itself on all mechanisms of justice in our age, community justice being no exception. This means that, from this perspective and given the criteria of efficiency and efficacy (with regard to private interests), users (the parties in conflict) are guaranteed freedom of choice between products (procedures, results in conflict management) offered by a range of providers (functionaries of justice). This reduces the dynamic of justice administration to a relationship between clients (provideruser) and the processes of justice administration appear to lose their ties to the social environment in which they are inscribed. The efficiency of the administration of justice is reduced to the satisfaction of the parties, independently of the way in which each case influences the larger dynamics of community regulation. It is hard to find community figures who possess a blatantly commercial bent, but it is not so hard to recognize the commercial principle in figures who tend to identify with the state and principle of the community. With regard to the trends in which the principle of the community is recognizable, the mechanisms of community justice are subordinated to the broadest processes of regulation that occur within a specific community. Community justice participates in a process of community development through the construction, reaffirmation and re-creation of the regulatory structures that exist within it. Thus, each case of conflict management essentially acts out the institutional basis of the community by activating local social norms. Given a controversial case, the mechanism of justice places the regulatory structures of the community before that specific case. As a result, conflict management translates into a medium for community self-regulation to the extent that (1) the entire social groupand not just the parties involvedparticipate in the construction and enforcement of norms, and (2) the process strengthens community institutions in that it reaffirms the communitys norms and the outcomes generated through its regulatory processes.
Community Justice, Conflict, and Communal Living

The mark of a given principle of regulation can be seen through the different visions for how mechanisms of community justice contribute to peaceful co-existence. Beyond the evidence that mechanisms of community justice contribute to social order (Ingvenson 1993: 379-ff.), the state, market and community can concur in the bet for community justice as instruments of communal living, for attenuating violence and for peace-building. Moreover, [the different principles] can influence the development of this bet through two elements: constructivism and holism. Yet there are fundamental differences between the strategies of each principle. There are, first of all, significant differences with regard to constructivism. The momentum towards constructive community justice is seen by everyone not as a tool to be imposed, but above all as a way to find convenient paths toward managing conflicts in the future. Nonetheless, there is a fundamental difference. In the principle of the market, there is no recognition of a specifically social realm of regulation, so that the task of conflict management tends to be focused exclusively on the conflict itself, the parties involved and the respective functionary, while the state and principle of the community cannot afford to ignore the social realm of regulation (the former preaches the justness of the community, the latter the adjustment to legal norms). As a result, understanding what constitutes communal living changes from one principle to the next. Hence, from the [perspective of] the market, communal living is the result of the accumulation of constructively resolved conflicts. Meanwhile, the community perspective must be primarily understood as the construction of the social fabric and the re-establishment of social links; while the principle of the state implies some form of subordination to state-based legality.

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These differences are also expressed in the momentum behind the bet for holistic conflict management in community justice mechanisms. From the principle of the market, attending to the different dimensions that affect the parties involved is a matter of quality improvement in the service of justice administration. Within the principle of the community, holism means including the social environment in which the conflict occurs. This means that not only can those directly affected hope for a means towards peaceful conflict management, but also that the community will improve the conditions for communal living and co-existence. From this point of view, conflict management should be aimed at repairing not only the ties between the parties; but rather the entire community and the social links that have been affected by the conflict. This involves improving conditions for the structures of regulation that might have been seen as harmful to the conflict (or revealed their inefficiency when faced with budding cases). Finally, the principle of the state tends to take the different variables in the conflict that are not covered by its normative structures and subordinate them to the rule of state law.
Community Justice, Power and Community

Empowerment, autonomy, identity and belonging can be seen at first glance as community strategies. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that, even though the [community] principle might be present in all of them, the state and market should also be considered as part of each as we complicate our analysis. In the first place, it is important to point out that the market bet can be more respectful of the parties in that it provides them the freedom to choose between different mechanisms and greater decision-making ability over their own conflicts. Meanwhile, the principle of the state can tend more towards empowering the functionaries of justice by providing them with a greater ability to determine behavior in the conflicts in which they participate and in the social environment in which they operate. Meanwhile, the principle of the community assumes the complex empowerment of different factors within the community itself: community norms and authorities. Hence, the principle of the community empowers regulatory structures that strengthen both community appeals (in which norms are produced on a case-by-case basis) and the functionary (who embodies the institutional aspect of the community to which he or she belongs and to which he or she is submitted). This concept can be better understood if we relate it to the bet of autonomy. The market tends towards an ideal situation in which the partiesrepresenting the demand sideand the functionaries of justicerepresenting the supply sideboth approach the market as subjects who, through their own free choice, establish a relationship in which the latter assumes the task of managing the conflict of the former. This being the case, each side has the autonomy to choose its client. In the meantime, in the principles of the state and the community, autonomy can be seen through the functionaries and the mechanisms of justice. In spite of this, the types of autonomy preached by each side are contradictory. The autonomy of the mechanism from the point of view of the principle of the state should be compatible (or else it would not be state-based) with the subordination of rules to state law. The community-based autonomy of the mechanism is outward-oriented, with an eye towards other actors such as the state, and should be part of the communitys own structures of regulation and institutions. In the same vein, it is important to distinguish the way in which the principles of regulation use community justice to advocate for identity and belonging. Identity, as seen from the principle of the market, is essentially individualistic, such that processes of community regulation serve primarily to determine the conditions under which it would be desirable to provide the service of justice. In this sense, a cultural environment might be viewed as a portion of the market in which the supply and consumption of the services of justice take place. Meanwhile, in the other two principles there is a recognizable sense of the collective in the strategies surrounding identity and belonging. In the principle of the community, the community

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rules are, as mentioned above, the setting for and the result of the mechanisms of justice. The principle of the state also makes use of this principle. It attempts to achieve the strongest possible link between community justice mechanisms and the community processes of regulation (there is talk of putting the community first and having equity as a criterion of primary importance before the law), while still establishing instruments that tend to guarantee the subordination of community-based structures of regulation to state-based structures. [These structures include:] (1) the states right to intervene in the community to support the national legal regime, and (2) legal control over the actions of the functionaries of community justice.
Community Justice and the Legal Justice System

The two main strategies that emerge from the principle of the state in the push toward mechanisms of community justice are: the decongestion of the justice system and access to the administration of justice.10 As we have seen, the states interests (in combination with some other strategies) broadly support the development of different mechanisms of justice within the community. The two strategies must be related to each other and analyzed in terms of the unique potential they have in the context of the administration of community justice. With regard to the first, we must say that the two strategies diverge with regard to their underlying interests, and in most social settings in which they are both present, they have been contradictory. On the one hand, the bet of decongesting of legal channels is rooted in the need for the state system to effect its supremacy through the imposition of its norms. The concern over congestion comes from the notion that there is social disorder when the state system for administering justice is unable to enforce state norms.11 On the other hand, the bet regarding access to the administration of justice comes from an interest in expanding citizenship by generating conditions to incorporate those whose legal rights have not been protected. The need for access has been highlighted by intense social movements; movements that have developed at different points in time, but that have all found a particularly propitious space in the societies of the welfare state. In these societies, access to legal protection of ones rights became essential to guarantee the main objectives of such states. These two strategies, although they appear to harmonize in many cases, must be seen as openly contradictory in the context of the administration of legal justice. In the first place, because of the costs involved. While decongestion is directed toward reducing the costs of the legal operation, access tends to increase costs because it increases coverage and distributes more resources to the weakest parties. In the second place, [the contradiction] is due to the measures involved in this process. Decongestion implies measures whose practical significance is: (1) reduced coverage of legal protection; (2) reduced guarantees of the formal equality promised to each party by the modern justice system. Meanwhile, the measures toward achieving access involve: (1) a qualitative and quantitative expansion of services; (2) an expansion of the ways to help excluded people overcome economic, cultural, and geographic barriers that impede equal access to the administration of justice. These differences and contradictions are in some sense the basis for the principle movements that have occurred within the different branches of law throughout modernity. What is especially notable right now is that community justice is most often described as effective in satisfying the two sides, with no apparent contradiction. Evidently, the development of
10

11

The expansion of access to justice coincides with the democratic-administrative rationalization of the judicial process (Harrington 1982: 62). This is why Abel (1982: 267 and ss.) points out that the community institutions that join with the existing institutions of formal control neither replace them nor imply their reduction. Therefore, rather than talking about decongestion, it might be more appropriate to talk about reinforcing the judicial system.

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mechanisms of justice in the community lightens the burden on the judicial system while at the same time it facilitates access to the administration of justice. What has happened? Is the change in the setting of conflict management enough to guarantee that the contradiction that previously appeared unsolvable should find a solution that is acceptable and satisfactory to all? Evidently what has happened is that there has been a change in the setting (from state to community institutions) for managing some controversies, but not all. It is clear that decongestion is attempted through reducing the issues to be dealt with by the judicial system, by turning over part of the responsibility (for certain issues) to community actors. It is clear that this state interest has been fully achieved. However, what happens with access to justice administration through mechanisms of community justice? There is no doubt that these mechanisms constitute a tool that is more accessible in economic, geographic, and cultural terms than the conventional judicial system for the administration of justice. That being the case, the mechanisms of community justice have a clear tool for managing conflicts. But it does not necessarily solve the problem of access to the administration of justice. What remains clear is that community justice offers a type of justice administration that cannot be achieved through conventional legal justice. Yet there is disagreement over the quality of this offer. It is clear that, in the principle of the state, the distribution of responsibilities between the judicial system and the community mechanisms creates a division between those conflicts that have recourse to all of the guarantees of protection of the parties rightsas established by the lawand those that dont. That being the case, we will have a system of discriminatory access (in which we can talk about first- and second-class justice), in which the state bows out of its obligation to protect all legally recognized rights in order to concentrate on only a few of them. 12 With regard to the existence of mechanisms of community justice, given the absence of guarantees from the state, it is apparent that we can only talk about access to the administration of justice to the extent that there are reliable guarantees offered through the communitys own institutions. When community institutions cannot be relied upon to manage conflicts, it is difficult to see a mechanism of community justice as a mechanism for access to the administration of justice.13 It can perhaps only be an alternative mechanism for dealing with conflicts.

SETTINGS AND STRATEGIES: KEYS TO STUDYING COMMUNITY JUSTICE POLICIES

Following this line of thought, the analysis of policies in the field of community justice must be linked to the principles of regulation from which each one of these policies is developed (and which they benefit). Thus, we can recognize the principle of the state in policies whose actions are directed at the development of mechanisms of community justice as a medium for strengthening the states ability to shape social reality. We can identify the presence of the principle of the market when the axis of the policy revolves around the satisfaction of demand through the advocacy of mechanisms of community justice that improve the quality and diversity of the existing supply of justice. And we can recognize the principle of the community in the policies that focus their attention on strengthen-

12

13

Abel points out that, although it can be deduced that there is a public demand for non-state institutions of conflict management, given the generalized distrust that tends to exist toward a judiciary that tends to privilege the interests of big business, the creation of informal alternatives accentuates discrimination because, under certain circumstances, the speed and the economy of costs undermine the construction of a fair and acceptable solution (Abel 1982: 8). According to Abel himself (1982: 297), the existence of mechanisms of community justice increases the disadvantage between parties with opposing interests and actually deprives the weaker parties of the advantages offered by the states legal institutions. The states protection of legally consecrated rights is subjected to the different factors that operate in informal mechanisms.

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ing local institutions and the self-regulatory processes of the community. Thus, a policys deepest nature may be found in its emphasis on the strategies that can be constructed from a given principle of regulation. Yet the analysis will always require a deeper level of complexity, given that the principles of regulation cannot act efficiently with the same policies in any given context. Thus, it is then necessary to specify the particularities that each principle might need to develop in the different regulatory settings in which it will have to act in contemporary society. In the settings that can be characterized as involving full citizenship, the state order is a reality and the supremacy of jurisdictional laws and authorities is recognizable. The main goal of community justice in such a scenario lies in the attempt to surpass (in opportunity and quality) the procedures and decisions that are produced in conflict management. The most important tension here appears to be between the state and principle of the community. While in the first, the fundamental objective is to guarantee the integrity of the legal order, in the second priority is given to the reconstruction of the social fabric affected by the conflict. Thus, in the first case more importance tends to be given to the rules that the state defines for the mechanisms and their actions, while in the second greater importance is given to the relationships, the rules, and to the [social] ties that the mechanisms try to attend to. We can also, to a certain extent, identify a tension between these two principles of regulation in settings of restricted and marginalized citizenship. Only here, the state and community compete as options for [social] order in the face of a reality which lacks recognizable rules in specific social contexts. The tension is therefore between the tendency to build ones own, self-regulating institutions, and the tendency to produce social order by developing regulatory processes that are subordinate to the state and the states legal order and that rely on institutions thatdespite being located in the communityare to a greater or lesser extent submitted to the centralizing normative structure of the state. The tension in this situation is expressed in the environment in which efforts and resources are concentrated. The principle of the community determines a policy in which action is directed toward the construction and strengthening of its own norms and institutions, while the principle of the state may concentrate on the production of an institutional system thatdespite being located in the community and having links and referents thereinis subordinated to the state power. Its subordination is produced through organic mechanisms (statutes of state order that are named, regulated and controlled by state bodies) and functional mechanisms (in the determination of the most general norms to define the realm of action, the procedures and the limits to the decisions that can be made). The main tension in the settings that are ruled by non-state legal structures, even when located within the same principles of regulation, is essentially different. The confrontation centers on the existence of a social order within the community that is different from the [order] linked to the state. As a result, there exists an institutional system that uses normative structures and bodies based on different centralities. Faced with this reality, the state intervenes as a principle of tension in an attempt to establish more or less intense mechanisms for subordinating the communitys normative system to the normative system of the state. This tension can be seen in the states policies of recognizing the communities and their legal structures. While [the state] is saying that it accepts the fact that a human group is ruled according to its own norms and procedures, it is also saying that these are to a certain extent subordinate to the laws of the state. In light of the above, it is important to point out that the most evident tensions are those between the state and the community. Although the other principle, the market, competes with the other two in each of the scenarios, it generally does not reach the point of becoming antagonistic. On the contrary, what we can observe is that the principle of the market integrates elements of the other two principles into its regulatory structures and offers the result as an improved product, through which both the state and the community continually permeate more and more. Thus, starting out from a limited foundation for handling conflict, [the market] incorporates into its product

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part of the principle of the statesuch as the legal efficacy of its actionsand part of the principle of the communitysuch as a certain degree of holism in managing controversies or appeals to community fairness. That being the case, a subtle tension exists between the principle of the market and the other two. The social environment of regulation assumed by the other two tends to be downplayed by the market. This has repercussions with regard to the type of actions that [the market] develops. While the contradiction between state- and community-based policies has to do with which regulatory setting each principle preferentially develops and fortifies (i.e., state or community norms), the tension between the market and the other principles is expressed through the fact that the principle of the market concentrates on the quality of the product. In this manner, it concentrates on strengthening the techniques of conflict management. Finally, I wish to underscore something that has already widely surfaced. There are no pure policies. Without community, there is no community justice because the principle of the community is always needed as an indispensable path that allows the policies to arise from other principles. The state is an undeniable reality with regard to each of the principles in each of the settings. Even legal pluralism, which is the most commonly cited policy with regard to the principle of the community, requires a part of the state in order to operate in a world in which the total isolation of the community is impossible. The market has permeated and continues to permeate the policies that arise from the other principles. All of this means that when we say that a policy is rooted in a given principle, we are necessarily highlighting the principle vertex of a triangle in which the other vertices exist in some form as a guide for the processes of community justice.

REFERENCES
Abel, Richard (1982a). The Politics of Informal Justice, Vol. I. London: Academic Press. _________ (1982b). The Politics of Informal Justice, Vol. II. London: Academic Press. Ardila, Edgar (2000). Justicia Comunitaria: Claves para su comprensin, in Pensamiento Jurdico, 1. Bogota: Law School of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Bonafe- Schmitt, Jean Paul (1991). Las Justicias de lo Cotidiano, Translation by F. Caballero Harriet and A. Irizar Gmez. San Sebastin: Laboratorio de Sociologa Jurdica. Faria, Jos Eduardo (1995). El poder judicial en Brasil: Paradojas, desafos y alternativas, in El Otro Derecho, VII, 2. Bogota: ILSA. Habermas, Jrgen (1998). La Constelacin Postnacional. Barcelona: Paids. Harrington, Christine (1982). Delegalization, Reform movements: A Historical Analysis, in Richard Abel, ed., The Politics of Informal Justice , Vol. I. London: Academic Press. Hobbes, Thomas (1994). Leviat. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica. Locke, John (1995). Segundo tratado sobre el gobierno civil. Barcelona: Altaya. Pastor, Santos (1993). Ah de la justicia! Poltica judicial y economa. Madrid: Civitas. Rousseau, Jean Jacques (1983). El contrato social. Madrid : Sarpe. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (1998). De la mano de Alicia: Lo social y lo poltico en la postmodernidad. Bogota: Universidad de Los Andes. _______ (2000). A crtica da razao indolente, Volume I. Porto: Edicoes Afrontamento. Vallespn, Fernando (2000). El futuro de la poltica. Madrid: Taurus. Velsquez Ruiz, Enrique (1985). La comunidad una imagen o un concepto? in Rev. Procesos y Politicas Sociales, 22. Wolkmer, Antonio (1994). O pluralismo jurdico. Fundamentos de uma nova cultura no direito. Sao Paulo: Alfa-Omega. Yngvesson, Barbara (1993). Local People, Local Problems and Neighborhood Justice: The Discourse of Community, in Sally Merry, ed. San Francisco Community Boards: The Possibilities of Popular Justice. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

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