Method
Sociology of law
Overview
The sociology of law, legal sociology, or law and society, is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociology, but others tend to consider it a field of research caught up between the disciplines of law and sociology. Still others regard it as neither a subdiscipline of sociology nor a branch of legal studies but as a field of research on its own right within the broader social science tradition. Accordingly, it may be described without reference to mainstream sociology as "the systematic, theoretically grounded, empirical study of law as a set of social practices or as an aspect or field of social experience". It has been seen as treating law and justice as fundamental institutions of the basic structure of society mediating "between political and economic interests, between culture and the normative order of society, establishing and maintaining interdependence, and constituting themselves as sources of consensus, coercion and social control".
Irrespective of whether sociology of law is defined as a sub-discipline of sociology, an approach within legal studies or a field of research in its own right, it remains intellectually dependent mainly on the traditions, methods and theories of sociology proper, criminology, administration of justice, and processes that define the criminal justice system, as well as to a lesser extent, on other social sciences such as social anthropology, political science, social policy, psychology, and geography. As such, it reflects social theories and employs social scientific methods to study law, legal institutions and legal behavior. The sociological study of law, therefore, understands jurisprudence from differing perspectives. Those perspectives are analytical or positive, historical, and theoretical.
More specifically, sociology of law consists of various approaches to the study of law in society, which empirically examine and theorize the interaction between law, legal and non-legal institutions, and social factors. Areas of socio-legal inquiry include the social development of legal institutions, forms of social control, legal regulation, the interaction between legal cultures, the social construction of legal issues, the legal profession, and the relation between law and social change.
More than often sociology of law benefits from research conducted within other fields such as comparative law, critical legal studies, jurisprudence, legal theory, law and economics and law and literature. Its object and that of jurisprudence focused on institutional questions conditioned by social and political situations converge - for example, in the interdisciplinary dominions of criminology and of economic analysis of law - contributing to stretch out the power of legal norms but also making their impacts a matter of scientific concern.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Sometimes what is called the constitution of the state, that is, the interest of the government; sometimes the interest of particular orders of men who tyrannize the government, warp the positive laws of the country from what natural justice would prescribe. In some countries, the rudeness and barbarism of the people hinder the natural sentiments of justice from arriving at that accuracy and precision which, in more…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Sociology of law is.
What one does in the household affects others directly and the consequences are appreciated at once and in an intimate way. As we say, they “come home.” Special organization to care for them is a superfluity. Only when the tie has extended to a union of families in a clan and of clans in a tribe do consequences become so indirect that special measures are called for. The neighborhood is constituted largely on the…
John Dewey, The public and its problems
States what Sociology of law is.
This preparatory treatment consists in finding general propositions which express concisely what is common to large classes of observed facts; and these are called the empirical laws of the phenomena. We have, therefore, to inquire, whether any similar preparatory process can be performed on the facts of the social science; whether there are any empirical laws in history or statistics.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Sociology of law is.
Philosophers who discussed Sociology of law
Related ideas
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Feminism
- Hans Kelsen
- Jürgen Habermas
- Jurisprudence
- Sociology
- Law
- Geography
- Max Weber
- Niklas Luhmann
- Nihilism
- Psychology
- Postmodernism
- Political science
- Social science
- Autopoiesis
- Legal positivism
- Critical legal studies
- Law and economics
- Supreme Court of the United States
- University of Oxford
- Social change
- Émile Durkheim
- Michel Foucault
Place in the tradition
Part of Jurisprudence.