The International Library of Essays in Law and Society

Law is often looked at, by jurists and others, as an autonomous field, independent from other domains; moreover, one without any sort of immersion in society. There is, however, by no means a shared consensus about this, as most analysts tend to, on the contrary, envisage law and legal systems, formal or informal, pluralist or not, as responding to the diverse contexts into which they are embedded. Different authors place a different emphasis on what these contexts are: for some, they are mostly economic, for others, cultural, for other social, or even linked to power structures; some others prefer to focus, instead, on their historical background. All do it within sociological templates. In class we shall try to carry an initial systematic and interactive study and analysis of legal institutions and forms, always from a sociological perspective. We will look at both international and national productions on this front, with as wide a disciplinary scope as possiblewithin context and in the chronological order of their conjunctures of emergence.

1963

Israel Law Review, 2001

The connection between law and contemporary social science emerged as a consequence of the quest for social reform. As law became more instrumental, it also became more empirical, more concerned with policy. For this process, it turned to social science. Social science complied and has become an adjunct to law in the quest for solving social problems. As this partnership has developed, the relationship between law and social science has matured. Not only has social science sought to educate and influence law, it has also incorporated law into its own disciplinary concerns. Furthermore, the field of socio-legal studies may be on the verge of establishing itself as a separate and distinct discipline, independent of the practical concerns of law.The scholarly intersection of law and social science — or socio-legal studies, as I shall call it — now speaks with at least three voices addressed to at least three audiences. It speaks as policy analysis, a handmaiden to law. It also speaks i...

Journal of Law and Society, 2007

Századvég Edition

Through its function, law provides normative prescriptions for human behaviour, i.e. it prohibits certain types of behaviour and permits others in a given situation. The fundamental task of jurisprudence is therefore to clarify the meaning of the interrelationships between normative prescriptions and thus to ensure that there are no contradictions in meaning between the many thousands and tens of thousands of legal norms. Only in this way is it possible that the legal rules to be followed in everyday life fulfil their function and that legal certainty is not endangered. Substantive jurisprudence analyses and develops the totality of legal concepts that ensure the internal conceptual coherence of a field of law and constantly monitors the coherence of the legal norms required for specific life situations. From now on, depending on the different legal concepts to varying degrees, the consistency of the specific legal norms and legal concepts with the general principles of justice is also included in the consideration. This approach thus moves in the dimension of normative conceptual coherence. On a broader level, the philosopher of law does the same when, apart from analysing substantive law, he deals with the content of the principles of justice and their relationship to each other, and from this establishes requirements for the conditions of a just legal order. However, law, although it fulfils its function in a normative dimension, is a social phenomenon like other fields of activity that fulfil a social function, e.g. the economy, art, science, politics, etc., and any legal phenomenon can be studied from the point of view of facticity, just like other social phenomena. This is the essence of the sociological approach to law, which can be formulated in contrast to the approach of theoretical jurisprudence or legal philosophy as a field of analysis of social facticity and causality or effects. For example, while the substantive law of civil law examines a legal regulation on a pledge or surety from the point of view of how these contractual securities fit into the framework of existing contract law as a whole, the sociological approach to law asks how often pledges or sureties are used as contractual securities in everyday contractual practice, from the point of view of the absence of contradictions of meaning. Or which social interests and which social disadvantages have favoured the emergence of this form of pledge and surety in everyday contractual practice, and which social interests would be served by alternative regulations in this area? In the sociology of law, one therefore moves from the normative dimension to the factual dimension, to the dimension of conflicts of interest, social causes and effects, when analysing legal norms and legal phenomena. Looking at sociological studies and the various lines of research in the sociology of law in this approach, one can distinguish between a narrower and a broader understanding of the sociology of law. The sociology of law in the narrower sense still focuses on legal norms like the thematic legal sciences, and it is no coincidence that the sociology of law developed historically in the last decades of the 19th century. The sociology of law in the narrower sense, like the theoretical legal sciences, is concerned with legal norms and legal provisions, but with their actual consistency rather than with normative-conceptual coherence and possible logical contradictions. Or does it ask which social interests and political forces have shaped the legal norms under study and which political forces serve the dominance of which political forces in social struggles and which social groups are subordinated and disadvantaged in power by the legal norms under study?

Law and its countless legal, academic, professional and institutional manifestations, all being intrinsically social, fall within the scope of sociological inquiry. It is, therefore, not surprising if some sociologists and jurists have tried to bring the benefits of sociological ideas to legal thought and practice. Introducing sociological insights into law, a feasible and useful project in theory, has however been only marginally accomplished in practice. Despite the social make-up of law and the kinship between legal theory and social theory, the former being a branch of the latter, and despite the efforts of sociolegal scholars over the past hundred years to integrate legal and sociological ideas, law and sociology remain apart.

2020

Journal of Law and Society, 2002

The promise of sociolegal research varies for different constituencies. For some legal scholars it has been a promise of sustained commitment to moral and political critique of law and to theoretical and empirical analysis of law's social consequences and origins. To continue to deliver on that promise today, sociolegal studies should develop theory in new forms emphasizing the variety of forms of regulation and the moral foundations on which that regulation ultimately depends. It should demonstrate and explore law's roles in the routine structuring of all aspects of social life and its changing character as it faces the challenge of regulating relations of community not bounded solely by the jurisdictional reach of nation states.

Journal of Law and Society, 2007

The first section of this paper provides a description of the main findings and recommendations of the report of the Nuffield Inquiry on Empirical Legal Research, conducted by Professors Hazel Genn, Martin Partington, and Sally Wheeler. Professor Michael Adler also published a paper specifically on research training, and the section also draws upon some of his analysis. The second section gives more context to the report by presenting some data on the increasing penetration of law into all aspects of our lives. The third section takes a critical look at the recommendations and suggests that developing a research capacity in empirical socio-legal research is not going to be easy.

Journal of Law and Society, 2022