Law beyond the state : the makings of justice in urban Sierra Leone

This study reckons with the puzzle of a justice mechanism that has not only resisted the hostility of state authorities but has thrived and proliferated. To come to terms with the phenomenon of neighbourhood courts or barrays in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, I situate my study within its specific postcolonial and 'post-conflict' context, to shed light on ways in which ordinary people understand and engage with the law and (extra)legal processes through and beyond the state. Post-colonial Sierra Leone divides the country into two legal, territorial, and juridical realities - the Western Area (formerly the Colony) where the capital, Freetown, is located, and the Provinces (formerly the Protectorate), comprising most of rural Sierra Leone. Statutory law dictates chieftaincy and customary courts in the Provinces, while expressly prohibits the same in Freetown. Notwithstanding, barrays or unofficial courts not only persist in Freetown, despite the statutory prohibition, there is also demand for their services. This raises important questions at the heart of my thesis about what, why, where barrays are; the social, economic, and political networks that support them; when and how they came to exist in this urban part of Sierra Leone; and why people gravitate towards them. To engage with these questions, barrays are studied in their own social contexts and on their own terms, examining their causal significance and connections to different social and legal systems in Sierra Leone. In so doing, this study examines the role of law and (extra)legal processes in both Sierra Leone's colonial and post-colonial continuities and disjunctures, and in its post-conflict state (re)construction and legal framework, to understand not just how state power is exercised or perceived, but also in the ways law and legal processes manifest in the daily lives of citizens and become locally (re)produced ideas of 'justice'. By using a people-centred approach, my study of barrays, official courts and similar state bodies like the police, will show what looking at individual trajectories can tell us about the development of legal systems, as well as attitudes towards both the state, and institutions that provide justice. Such a people-centric approach informs an overarching argument that emphasises how these institutions, often depicted as separate and distinct, are interlinked and reliant on one another to enact a complex system of law in Sierra Leone.