Do people prefer to settle their disputes within the legal framework initiated by the State or outside it? And why? This book explores how State and non-State legal systems are interrelated in popular perception and practice. By focusing on one immigrant minority community in the US - the Sikhs - the book discusses all the modes and methods, patterns and processes, based on customary, religious, and community traditions, practiced in the process of dispute settlement. The book is quite significant in that it introduces a double hermeneutic paradigm for plural legal systems: the formal and the informal. It will also help legal administrators develop a proper realignment between the informal and formal systems of law and justice.