Behind the judges’ desk: an ethnographic study on the Italian courts of justice

Interpretation of the written law, far from being a cognitive activity, it’s a concrete and material practice, which is created, recreated and reinforced through experience and through continuous individual and collective learning occasions. This process isn’t based on perennial and immutable axioms, but is an activity built in practice, through subsequent “translations” of formal and abstract rules into “concrete” lawsuits. Being a magistrate doesn’t mean acquiring a body of abstract knowledge on how to interpret the written laws; rather it signifies an ability to practice as a judge in a court of justice. In order to study the logics that characterize the “fabrique du droit”, it is necessary to go “behind the judges’ desk” so as to investigate the “real doings” of the practitioners.