Producing Legality

"Producing Legality" tells the story of how law and legality are understood by Cuban policy-makers and legal scholars. Marjorie S. Zatz explores their vision for Cuban society and the strategies they employ to create a legal order that will be respected by the Cuban people and the international community. Throughout, she discusses the cultural and structural contraints that limit their options, linking abstract theories of law-making and the state to specific dilemmas that confront individual policy-makers. The work is based on ethnographic field work in Cuba over a seven-year period, in-depth interviews with top policy-makers, and an analysis of documentary data available only in Cuba. "Producing Legality" provides a window into the offical construction of socialist legality and the dissemination of this legal consciousness throughout the country. "Producing Legality" provides a rigorous and provocative account of the inner workings of the Cuban legal system while demonstrating how law and legality are "produced" and "reproduced" on a daily basis in the courts, workplaces, law schools, state agencies and legislature of the country.