Lower state courts are the focus of both international and national access to justice policies and programs but remain understudied in Uganda. Drawing on 3 years of ethnographically informed research on citizen engagement with a busy magistrates' court in post-war northern Uganda, we show the diverse reasons why citizens appeal to the rule-of-law in places where state authority is contested. In a context of limited statehood, against a backdrop of high-levels of corruption and inefficiency in the judicial system, people turn to lower state courts for normative, pragmatic, and tactical reasons that are not well captured by conventional measures of procedural justice. Our findings extend theory on citizen-authority relations in a global context, shedding light on contextual meanings of legitimacy, trust, and corruption in places where lower state courts are deeply problematic sites for achieving justice.

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“也许我们应该走法律途径”：公民与乌干达北部战后下级州法院的接触

下级州法院是国际和国家诉诸司法政策和计划的重点，但在乌干达仍未得到充分研究。基于 3 年关于公民参与战后乌干达北部繁忙地方法院的民族志研究，我们展示了公民在国家权威受到质疑的地方诉诸法治的多种原因。在国家地位有限的情况下，在司法系统高度腐败和效率低下的背景下，人们出于规范、务实和策略上的原因转向下级州法院，而这些原因并没有被传统的程序正义措施所充分体现。我们的研究结果在全球范围内扩展了公民与权威关系的理论，阐明了合法性、信任、