"Poor people are never right": legal consciousness and the families' accounts of Beninese justice

“Poor people are never right”. In Benin, most citizens are rather skeptical towards their justice system. Common discourses and representations often depict notaries as forging wills; lawyers as likely to spin out a case to their own advantage. Judges are portrayed as corrupt and their clerks as too poorly paid to withstand the same "temptations". And yet Beninese state courts are constantly utilized. In 2005, 7,530 civil cases were introduced before the various first degree courts of Benin, 11,367 of them in 2010.This is why rather than concentrating on state bureaucrats and their practices, I chose to focus on the customers, their perception of public service and what use they ultimately make of it.
As a striking example, inheritance disputes, although entrenched in family dynamics and witchcraft threats, are constantly brought up before the jurisdictions. I will therefore try and understand the processes of those families who decide to “refer to the state” in inheritance conflict cases. I will first focus on what happens “before the law” and on family negotiations. Why do these fail and what are the reasons justifying – or delaying – legal action? I will then overview people’s experiences of Beninese public services, wondering about the access and cost of justice. I will focus on the end result, and on the customers’ satisfaction towards this constantly criticized, yet also increasingly mobilized bureaucracy. Eventually, I will analyze people’s discourses regarding Justice and the State, all of which using both participant observation in Court and interviews with family members and judiciaries.
In other words, I will focus on legal consciousness within Beninese families, on how the laws and the institutions supposed to be enforcing them are perceived, experienced and utilized.