Arguing With Tradition Sparknotes

“Arguing with Tradition: The language of the Law in Hopi Tribal Court” by Justin B. Richard is an investigative work that explores the dynamics of a contemporary Native American court system to understand the interaction of language and communication and how they affect Anglo-American jurisprudence. The book aims to record the influence of the Hopi traditions and customs on its legal and lawful proceedings eventually shaping the form of its entire constitutional and judicial system. The Hopi people strongly believe in the continuation and preservation of their cultural heritage as having an effect on the success of their future endeavors, owing to which they have made a conscious effort into molding the Anglo-American legal practices to conform

Through clever use of narration and with continuous references to socio-legal and linguistic anthropological theories and methodologies, he is able to generate curiosity in the reader by giving them a chance to witness the emergence of tribal law in the Hopi courts and their struggle for sovereignty. In the 1940’s the Bureau of Indian Affairs had created and propagated the legal system in Hopi in the image of Anglo-American style law much like the systems implemented in other courts of the Indian nations across the United States. However, Richard demonstrates that due to a lack of relevance to the Hopi culture, recently the tribe’s jurists and litigants have expressed a need for a court that resonates more with their cultural and traditional outlook and thus is able to interpret and resolve conflicts in a way that reflects the tribe’s own notion of justice and equality. However, the phenomenon observed by Richard was the fact that with over thirty years of the Anglo-American legal system operating in Hopi it had also in turn shaped and influenced some of the structures and rules of criminal and civil proceedings of the Hopi courts to the extent that even though they would stay true to their own cultural heritage but

The authenticity of these age-old values and customs is also questioned by a few. He then further elaborates on the lack of research that exists to accompany these claims and how his book aims to shed some light upon the said issues to offer an insight into the place of the Hopi customs and traditions as perceived by the Hopi jurists, litigants, lawyers, judges and other personnel involved in Hopi’s conflict resolution