146 Can Gossip Operate as a Law Enforcement Mechanism?

n 1986, the unassuming Shasta County community in California captured the attention and imagination of a number of law professors and legal scholars, spawning multiple law review articles and books regarding its homegrown dispute resolution system. This dispute resolution system, as studied by Professor Robert Ellickson of Yale Law School, was apparently based, at least primarily, not on the rule of law or a legal enforcement system--but interestingly, largely based on another system altogether: Gossip.