This book is an important contribution to studies that show how law can both reproduce hegemony while simultaneously providing an avenue to contest that hegemony. This book is also a welcome addition to studies of law and legal processes in the global South.--Contemporary Sociology

What a tour de force of a book. . . . Data about one intensively studied court in Trinidad supplement and reconstruct our knowledge about courts of all kinds elsewhere, and the position of low status litigants within them. If this were not feat enough, our 'grand' theoretical understandings of the way law works are also challenged. So do go away and read this book.--Howard Journal of Criminal Justice

[Lazarus-Black] goes beyond previous studies by synthesizing multiple factors into a model to explain how societies discourage victims of domestic violence from pursuing their legal rights. . . . This well-done study would be useful to activists as well as academics seeking to understand the obstacles faced by those prosecuting cases of domestic violence.--NWSA Journal

Mindie Lazarus-Black is a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Legitimate Acts and Illegal Encounters: Law and Society in Antigua and Barbuda and other works.