Fieldwork carried out in 1972 in a rural section of the commune of Verrettes, in the Artibonite Valley, anchors Lahav's comparison of two offices available to Haitian peasants who need a quarrel settled: the chef de section, who runs a rural section on the government's behalf, and the justice of the peace, bottom rung of the national court system.

Both were built after independence and have run side by side ever since, one resting on local custom and military authority, the other on the French-derived code the young republic adopted. Lahav argues that the balance between them is tipping. Roads, wage employment, schooling and a foreign-run hospital have produced an educated and relatively prosperous stratum that treats the justice of the peace as the only legitimate forum, and the weightier cases now go there.

She reads this as social differentiation rather than government policy pulling peasants into the national legal system.