The Irony of Social Legislation: Reflections on Formal and Informal Justice Interfaces and Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines

The agenda of this paper is to examine the interface between formal and informal justice systems in the Philippines.  Tentative proposals for the future between these two systems and future projects that may enrich this forum are discussed. Overall, the goal of the paper is to enrich the opportunites of marganilized populations in the Philippines to invoke the coercive powers of the official national legal system in their favor. The paper focuses on the problems of indigenous peoples.