Inventing tradition: The garippo report and the paraphernalia of jurisprudence

Abstract

This chapter argues that in 2000 the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne (UIUC), retained Judge Louis B. Garippo to moderate information gathering and to prepare a three-part report to legitimize findings that would deliberately result in no substantive action. The framework of a legal proceeding – whereby Garippo served as judge and the Board of Trustees as jury in absentia – provided the necessary “nonfictions and metaphors of traditional jurisprudence” (Cohen, 1935, p. 812) to construct vehicles of communication in which the dialogue and subsequent report on Chief Illiniwek would be seen as impartial and objective. That framework resulted in “The Chief Illiniwek Dialogue Report (CIDR),” authored by Judge Garippo and presented to the UIUC Board of Trustees on November 8, 2000.

Citation

Gamache, R. (2010), "Inventing tradition: The garippo report and the paraphernalia of jurisprudence", Denzin, N.K. (Ed.) Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 34), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 63-86. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034008