Courtroom Narratives: Judgement, Evidence and Submissions in a Botswana Courtroom

Abstract

This paper examines the theory of trials as narratives. It makes a comprehensive analysis of courtroom processes, which are classified into two types, being the administrative and the substantive processes. The substantive processes are the examinations, the submissions (or Summation in the U.S .A.), and the judgments. The one administrative process that lends itself to narrative analysis is the Readings of Facts in the Botswana courtroom. The narratives of the evidentiary processes and judicial processes are well subscribed in the literature, but this paper introduces the narratives of Submissions (Summations) and the Readings of Facts. Bennet and Fieldman’s(1981) theory is used to provide an understanding of the trial as storytelling; and O’Barr (1981 and 1982), Harris (2001), Gibbons (2003) and Labov (1972) as theoretical framework for the analysis of evidentiary narratives; and Kress’s (1993) algorithm theory of narratives is used to analyse Readings of Facts Narratives. The models are utilized for their effectiveness in describing each genre of the trial. The aim is to analyse the ways in which the law achieves its function.

Keywords: narrative, judgment, courtroom examination, submissions in courtrooms, polemics and critical pluralism