Paper Short Abstract:

Analyzing the course of a Romani judgment after an apparent ransom hit as an instance of “lived law” enables me to revisit/unsettle several binaries: that between state law and vernacular law, between justice and arbitration, between settlement and revenge, and ultimately between law and morality.

Paper Abstract:

My paper recounts a “Romani judgment” called upon to handle a ransom hit that occurred during my fieldwork in 2017 among a Romani group living in a marginal neighborhood in southern Romania. Even though it accommodates multiple variations in terms of how it is practiced across the various Roma groups, the Romani judgment ("judecata țigănească," also dubbed "kris" by some groups) is reportedly an ancient institution rooted in “Gypsy law” that conservative Romani-speaking peoples routinely resort to in order to resolve internal disputes—thereby also marking group limits, which can otherwise be rather porous. Romani judgments are inherently communitarian and largely consist of oratory. Moreover, in recent years they have turned to digital channels due to long-term migration. Despite these variations, the endurance of the Romani judgment as an institution is based on the belief shared by most Roma groups that state law merely enshrines the values of non-Roma and hence does not encompass their own norms of how “proper Roma” should behave. Tracing how the mediation process prompted by the attack unfolded inside the community I worked with, as well as its collusions with state law, my paper takes on a “lived law” perspective to unsettle/revisit several binaries: between state law and vernacular law, between justice and arbitration, between settlement and revenge, and ultimately between law and morality. In the case of vernacular justice, which is essentially a rhetoric exercise conflating legality, morality, and community politics, where do we ultimately draw the conceptual line between these domains—and should we?