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objectified, literally written onto the surfaces ofand figuratively built into the very structures ofordinary social relations, places and objects. Everypackage of food, piece of clothing and electricalappliance contains a label warning us about itsdangers, instructing us about its uses and telling uswhether (and where) we can complain if some-thing goes wrong. Every time we park a car, dry-

clean clothing or leave an umbrella in a cloak-room, we are informed about limited liabilities forloss. Newspapers, television, novels, plays, maga-zines and movies are saturated with legal images,while these very same objects display their claimsto copyright. Although much of the time legalforms go unnoticed and cognitively disappear,they are imperfectly naturalized. At any moment,

In popular culture, the modern trial often stands asan icon of the rule of law. It appears as a carefullyorchestrated process through which indetermi-nate aggregations of persons, words, stories andmaterial are transformed into facts of intention,causality, responsibility or property. Yet the trial ismerely the tip of a giant iceberg of matters thatcome to legal agencies for reconstruction andcontainment. Indeed, of the myriad activities that constitute modern life, this official, icono-graphic symbol of legality – the trial – is outpacedby the proliferation of expectations, norms, signsand objects in which the traces of professional andofficial legal work have been well hidden.

When we speak of the “rule of law,” it isbecause most of the iceberg of legality lies sub-merged within the taken-for-granted expectationsof mundane life. Rather than contested and chore-ographed in sometimes spectacular but alwaysstatistically rare trials, law is powerful and “rules”everyday life, because its constructions are regu-larly uncontested and habitual. Law’s construc-tions and mediations have been sedimentedthroughout the routines of daily living, helping tomake things move around in more or less clearways, without having to invoke, display or wieldtheir elaborate and intricate processes, especiallythe ultimate one, physical force.

Of course, this sedimentation and normativeregulation is never complete; we do not alwaysstay within the boundaries of legally sanctionedexpectations, and the reach of law is always dis-puted. Thus, much of the visible iceberg of legalityis about what to do in the event of a breach; someof those messes, or matters of concern, lead to lit-igation, and some, although very few, to trials. Aniceberg throws off a calf. Importantly, however,these visible legal battles are the outliers of thelaw’s more routine activities.

The law is a durable and powerful human insti-

tutional invention because it invisibly suffuses oureveryday life. More often than not, as we go aboutour daily lives, we rarely sense the presence of thelaw. Although law operates as an assembly formaking things public and mediating matters ofconcern, most of the time it does so without fan-fare, without contest, without notice. We pay ourbills because they are due; we respect our neigh-bors’ property because it is theirs. We drive on theright side of the road (in most nations) because it isprudent. We register our motor vehicles and stopat red lights. We rarely consider through what col-lective judgments and procedures we have defined“coming due,” “their property” and “prudent driv-ing” or why automobiles must be registered andwhy traffic stops at red lights. If we trace thesource of these expectations and meanings tosome legal institution or practice, the origin is sofar away in time and place that the matters of con-cern and circumstances of invention have beenlong forgotten. As a result of this distance, salescontracts, property and traffic rules seem to bemerely efficient, natural and inevitable, facts of life.

Legal objects, signs, forms, rules and decisionsare understood, however, to be a special kind offact, a legal fact. Perhaps we should collapse thedistance between the words legal and fact to writelegalfact to emphasize the procedures of law thatare the grounds for constructing facts, that is,legalfacts. In other words, jurisprudence recog-nizes at its core that its truths are created onlythrough its particular processes and that the rela-tionship between legalfacts and empirical facts is atbest only approximate.

As naturalized features of modern life, the signsand objects of law are omnipresent. Through his-toric as well as contemporary legal decisions thatare no longer actively debated, countless mattersof concern have been resolved, concretized and

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1 This exhibit and portions of the commentary derive fromPatricia Ewick, Susan S. Silbey, The Common Place of Law:Stories from Everyday Life, University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 1998.

The Common Place of Law Transforming Matters of Concern into the Objects of Everyday Life1

Susan S. Silbey, Ayn Cavicchi

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The museum as regulated space, 2005, photo collage, photos: Silke Müller

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the stabilized, historical legalfact can reappear, per-haps becoming a matter of concern, debate, chal-lenge or resistance. The iceberg fractures and apassing ship hits the new iceberg.

To illustrate the ways in which law publiclymediates matters of concern, we encouragevisitors to the exhibit to “trace the frail conduits”2

that have produced common place legalfactsthat we encounter as familiar objects. Although the possible examples we might display are inn-umerable (clothing labels, warnings on foodpackages, copyright imprints, trademark logos,sales receipts, air line tickets), we have chosen twocommon institutions of modern life that are thor-oughly shaped by law: the automobile and themuseum space.

Museums are saturated with legality. Throughtrusts, bequests, incorporation and property law,the museum is a legal invention as much as anarchitectural, historical, artistic and craft enter-prise. The staff and curators enjoy an array ofemployment rights that specify limits to thedegrees of freedom and constraint in their rela-tionships and transactions with the museum. Themuseum, in turn, in its corporate personhood isburdened with legally prescribed obligations tovisitors as well as employees. We will not elabo-rate these various relationships and obligationshere. Around the museum building, however, weare excavating the sedimented law (those frail con-duits) that has constructed the museum space andcontemporary patrons’ movements through thatspace. Alongside the legalfacts – of fire extinguish-ers, exit signs, electrical outlets, water sprinklers,facilities for handicapped access – we have dis-played portions of the relevant sections of theVerordnung des Innenministeriums über Versamm-lungsstätten [Decree by the Department of theInterior on assembly sites] that mandate the cre-ation and placement of these facilities and objects.The laws specify architectural and safety precau-tions for public exhibition space. With our noticeboards, we are making visible and explicit thatwhich becomes taken-for-granted practice inmuseum management, attendance and patronage.We have included in these displays not only exam-ples from the relevant codes of Germany and else-where but also some illustrations of how aspectsof the architecture and public space have been, at

different times and places, matters of active publicconcern. These concerns are expressed throughlitigation, news stories or calls for governmentaction of some sort to address a range of issuesfrom freedom of movement and of identity, torisks to the health and safety of individuals as wellas the community at large.

The automobile, like the museum “concen-trates the most astonishing degree of hyper-regu-lation. For drivers, a shiny new car comes embed-ded in a sticky web of laws and fines – not tomention a series of material needs from parkingspaces and gas to oil caps designed to fit a singlemake and model.”3 Moreover, Jain writes, “thetechnology of auto mobility has defined publicspace”4 in most industrialized nations, from thenineteenth century decisions to install traffic lanesand mandate driving on the right (or the left) sideof the road to the more recent allocation of desig-nated parking spaces for handicapped persons.Just as we have exhumed the legal provenance ofthe exit signs, electrical wiring and fire extinguish-ers of the museum space, we exhibit the legal con-struction of the automobile with statutory labels,public dispute and concern.5

The construction of the car as a mobilemachine is thoroughly specified, and the conform-ity of the particular automobile with the specifica-tions is certified through inspections. The drivers’and passengers’ actions and restraint are also spec-ified by law.

When a vehicle cannot meet the legal specifica-tions for road-worthy transportation, the lawintrudes by labeling the vehicles with a universalwarning sign, thereby permitting a non-conform-ing vehicle to travel on the roads while announc-ing to the world its deviance.

The transformation of this machine, the auto-

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Glazing materials

Windshield mounting

Roof crush resistance

Rearview mirror Windshield defrost& defogging

Vehicle identificationnumber

Odometer disclosure

Side view mirror

VOC emissions

Accelerator control systemBrake fluidDoor retention components

Side impact protection

Catalytic converter

Interior truck release

Fuel system integrity

Clean Air Act

New pneumatic tires

Car brake systemBrake hoses

Hazard lights

Engine serial number

CFC-12 free

Vehicle registration

Anti-freeze regulation

Hood latch system

Lamps

Reflectivedevices

Clean air act

Bumper standard

Content parts labeling

Vehicle inspection

Windshield wiping & washing

Occupant crash protection

The Legally Constructed Automobile (1), 2004, photo © Susan Silbey and Ayn Cavicchi

The Legally Constructed Automobile (2), 2004, photo © Susan Silbey and Ayn Cavicchi

Seat belt anchorages

Power operated windows

Air bag labeling (1)

Impact protection steeringcontrol system

Windshield zone intrusion

Controls & displays

Warning devicesOn-off switch air bagAir bag labeling (2)Air bag labeling (3)

Starter interlocktransmission braking effect

Seating system anchorages

Seat belt assemblies

Flammability ofinterior materials

Flammability ofinterior materials

Head restraint

Child restraintsystems

Inflatable restraint

Inflatable restraint

2 See Bruno Latour, this volume, introduction.3 Sarah S. Lochlan Jain, “‘Dangerous Instrumentality’: The

Bystander as Subject in Automobility,” in: Cultural Anthro-pology, 19, 1, 2004. p. 61.

4 Ibid.5 In his classic text, An Introduction to Legal Reasoning, Uni-

versity of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1949, Edward H. Leviuses the case of McPherson v. Buick 217 NY 382 (1916) toexemplify what he calls the third phase of the life of the“dangerous instrument” concept in tort law. In Cardozo’sopinion in this New York State Court of Appeals case, forliability to attach, danger must be immanent in the object.But, Cardozo argues, the objects to be so classified maychange over time. In McPherson, 1916, Cardozo writes thata defective automobile poses an immanent danger and assuch becomes an inherently dangerous object.

Theft protection

Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter WeibelZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. The MIT Press/Cambridge, MA 2005, pgs. 556-565.

the crowd in a traffic jam, much is going on that isquite distant from the law as a set of behavioralrules. The legalfacts, the signs of law, are alwaysmediated by social action. The very same object orlegalfact that is the source of dispute is also asource of communion. The drivers are boundtogether in a legally constructed space throughwhich they are negotiating their way, literally andmorally from one moment to another. While thelaw seems to govern most everything in the trafficjam, there is nothing it completely or totally regu-lates. People do not simply observe rules aboutright of way. At times, they forgo their right ofway to let another driver into the traffic, demon-strating their own sense of fairness or courtesy.Others blatantly violate such norms, enactingtheir own sense of daring or entitlement within thestructure of rules defined by “the law”. Paying thetoll can be an opportunity to voice a grievance or,for some, to share a pleasantry. In the lanes of traf-fic, tollbooths and drivers, somewhere in the inter-section of rules and their enactment, legalityemerges in the routine of ordinary everyday life.

The automobile has not only transformed thecitizen into a licensed driver, the machine into alegally constructed object, but the public spacesnow are apportioned among vehicles and personswho become, as a consequence of the automobile,pedestrians with legally specified rights and obli-gations.

An old chair placed in a recently shoveled park-ing spot on a public street and two elderly gentle-men sitting in beach chairs also in a parking spoton a public street display the depth of legality inshaping the concepts, practices and understandingof everyday activities. The practice of placing anold chair on a public street to hold a parking spotreveals a deeply sedimented conception of owner-ship and labor that cannot be practiced or inter-preted without legal concepts and cognitions. Thechair placed in the parking spot on a public street,with or without a person in the chair, is under-stood to endow the chair’s owner with use rightsin the space. Unlike contracts, copyrights, trafficsigns or bills of sale, which are standard markers oflegality, this chair in the snow is not the direct andintentional product of professional legal work.Instead, we might view these chairs as residues ofthat formal legal practice.

mobile, through licenses, titles and assorted safetyrequirements has been a subject of continualstruggle and debate. Newspaper reports, legisla-tive records, countless law cases attest to the pub-lic’s concern about the automobile.

The connection between legality and everydaylife is most explicit in the variable driving condi-tions over time and around the globe. A collisionbetween a newly installed trolley car, a peddler’swagon and an automobile was a familiar scene ona San Francisco street in 1905. In 2005, the compe-tition for public space has been won by the auto-mobile in most European and North Americancities, while it is still a lively contest in much ofAsia. Bicycle riders and pedestrians, however, havebegun a counter campaign to recapture the publicroads. The ability of law to organize everyday life,and without appearing prominently on the scene,is illustrated powerfully in a highway traffic jam, orwhat in France is called a bouchon, a blockage or cork in the road. Sitting in traffic on an express-way, for example at the entrance to a tunnel or at atollbooth, one observes an extraordinary degreeof compliance, and perhaps complacency, amongthe drivers in what is usually a frustrating situa-tion. The traffic jam and the appropriation of park-ing spots, which we will describe below, symbol-ize the degree to which contemporary society

is suffused with legality. The cars are registeredand the driver’s licenses issued according to law; the traffic moves in lanes whose size, con-struction, and marking are determined by law.Cars are sorted into lanes according to instruc-tions inscribed on various signs: one lane for taxis, another for personal cars, yet another for“high occupancy cars”. As cars crawl toward andapproach a tollbooth, the drivers’ hands emergeoffering the stipulated toll. Having paid the toll,their cars move on.

There is very little that happens on the roadthat has not at some time been specified by law.And, although the millions of drivers who travelalong the streets and highways follow instructionsabout lanes, speed, tolls, licensing of cars andthemselves, this legal regulation is only rarely amatter of active contemplation and calculation.Typically we become aware of the law and ourrelationship to it only when the formal law – andthe violence embedded in it – makes an appear-ance. Our pulse quickens at the sight of a policecruiser or the sound of a siren. At that moment,we scrutinize our own behavior and status inregard to the law’s intensions and powers. Most ofthe time, legal regulation is unremarked, withoutconsideration or challenge.

Although the law appears to be orchestrating

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Notice of failure to comply with automobile regulations, here inspection failure, 2004,photo © Susan Silbey and Ayn Cavicchi

Amish wagon, Pennsylvania, 2003,photo © Susan Silbey and Ayn Cavicchi

San Francisco trolley and car on tracks, 1905, film still. ■ Although the automobile has defined contemporary urbanspace, its dominance emerged only recently and not universally.

Beijing, China, 2004, photo © Susan Silbey and Ayn Cavicchi

Rather than a piece of professionalized law, thisis a visual image of the law from the bottom upand from outside of legal institutions. The chair inthe shoveled-out parking spot signals to theneighborhood, or any would-be parker, a type ofownership. In claiming ownership, that chair oftenelicits the same sorts of deference and respectaccorded more conventional types of property:Other drivers park elsewhere! Similarly, the viola-tion or transgression of this property claim(removing the chair and parking in the spot) maylead to conflicts and disputes more commonlyassociated with property as formally defined bythe legal system, by informal claims of trespass.

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Without naming the doctrinal concepts of con-structive or adverse possession, the person placingthe chair in a clearing among mounds of snowimplicitly invokes conventional and historic justifi-cations for property on the basis of investmentand labor, just those arguments that underwrotethe emergence of liberal law in the seventeenthcentury. The two old men’s seats in the parkingspot and the heavy labor of shoveling out themounds of snow are understood to endow thechairs’ owners with use rights in those spaces. Byplacing a chair in a public parking place, the formallegal idea of private property is appropriated alongwith many of the rights associated with it, such asexclusive use. Yet, property here is construed verydifferently than its doctrinal sense demands orwould allow. Even without registered deeds and

titles, stamps and seals, the law is absent in its for-mal professional sense and yet continually andmorally present in organizing social relations onthis city street around this particular constructionof the automobile, the parking space and privateproperty.

The public street becomes a forum, an agorawith a particular “set of procedures, its definitionof freedom and domination, its ways of bringingtogether those who are concerned [...] and whatconcerns them”.6 The legalfacts of public space,the truth of who owns and who can use this space,for what and for how long, no longer commandsunremarked deference. Whether others defer orcontest the claims to the parking spots, the legal-facts now demand collective reconfirmation oftheir matter-of-factness.

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6 Bruno Latour, this volume, introduction.562

The common place of law: property claims on a public street,2004, photo © Susan Silbey and Ayn Cavicchi

“Pedestrian Parking” on a public street, 2004, photo © SusanSilbey and Ayn Cavicchi, photo: Michelle Taylor Lagunas

Public concern about the capacities, rights and obligations of pedestrians, assortment of newspaper clippings, 1924-1961, © New York Times

Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter WeibelZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. The MIT Press/Cambridge, MA 2005, pgs. 556-565.

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Public spaces of theautomobile, 2004,photo collage, photo© Susan Silbey andAyn Cavicchi

Parking violations,2004, photo collage,photo © Susan Silbeyand Ayn Cavicchi

Where to park the car and where NOT to park the car, photocollage, 2004, photo © Susan Silbey and Ayn Cavicchi

Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter WeibelZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. The MIT Press/Cambridge, MA 2005, pgs. 556-565.