“Critical Empricism” and American Critical Legal Studies: Paradox, Program, or Pandora's Box?

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Trubek ◽  
John Esser
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Sociology Of Law ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Critical Sociology ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
The Law

What should we make of Susan Silbey's call for socio-legal scholarship that is both critical and empirical? Do we think the law and society movement can and should develop a critique of the legal order? Can empirical research contribute to such a critique? Does the idea of a “critical sociology of law” make any sense at all?

What is Left of the Law and Society Paradigm after Critique? Revisiting Gordon's “Critical Legal Histories”

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (01) ◽  
pp. 155-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Tomlins
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Sociolegal Studies ◽  
Indeterminacy Thesis ◽  
The Law ◽  
Resultant Stress

For more than twenty-five years, Robert Gordon's “Critical Legal Histories” has been savored by legal historians as one of the most incisive explanations available of what legal history can and should be. Gordon's essay, however, is of significance to the course of sociolegal studies in general. This commentary offers an appreciation, and a critique, of “Critical Legal Histories.” It explores Gordon's articulation of the central themes of critical legal studies, in particular his corrosion of functionalism and embrace of the indeterminacy thesis, and assesses the consequences for sociolegal and legal-historical analysis of the resultant stress on the contingency and complexity of social life.

The educative ambition of Law and Literature

Legal Studies ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Ward
Keyword(s):  
Law And Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many

In 1979, Allen Smith suggested that there was to be a ‘coming renaissance’ in Law and Literature as a teaching discipline. In fact, Law and Literature had already arrived. In 1973, James Boyd White had publishedhis The Legal Imagination, and had geared it primarily to the teaching and study of law. Of the many intriguing characteristics of the Law and Literature movement, one of the most exciting and most valuable, is the fact that, unlike many other theoretical approaches to the problems of law, the ambition of Law and Literature is firstly educative, and only then, secondly, social and political. Moreover this secondary ambition, has tended, in two senses, to be appended to the educational ambition. In one sense, it is additional in that the political manifesto is supposed to emerge from the educational force of literature. In a second sense, it is additional because politics was certainly not such a ranking ambition in the earliest days of the Law and Literature movement, and it is no concidence that the politicization of Law and Literature has come about as its star has risen, whilst that of Critical Legal Studies has declined

James Willard Hurst as Entrepreneur for the Field of Law and Social Science

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryant G. Garth
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Professional Identification ◽  
The Law ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Celebrations of the career of Willard Hurst tend to concentrate, quite understandably, on his scholarship in legal history. Most of those who now read and comment on his works are professional legal historians, and they tend to read and define Hurst according to that professional identification. This article takes a different approach, concentrating on Hurst's own role in the more general politics of legal scholarship. Hurst was not content with making a mark in legal history. He sought to challenge the legal establishment. We see the legacy of his efforts in the development of the field of law and social science, institutionalized in the mid 1960s in the Law and Society Association (LSA). Therefore, my focus is on the sociology and politics of scholarship rather than on intellectual history. I will not examine the relationship of Hurst's particular works to those who came before or after him, nor will I go through the exercise of suggesting what was good or lasting or useful about his work for present purposes.

scholarly journals Context and Convergence: Some Remarks on the Law and Society Movement

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-20
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Law And Society ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Problems And Solutions ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Degree Of Convergence ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The Impact

The law and society movement has grown greatly in recent years.  It explores two macro-questions:  the sources of law, on the one hand, and the impact of law, on the other.  It rejects the orthodox view of “legal science”, but embraces the methods of the social sciences. My own work has, recently, dealt with the issue of legal impact; and has also delved into socio-legal history.  Historical study can act as a kind of control group for law and society studies; comparative and cross—cultural studies can perform the same function.  Studies of modern legal system demonstrate a high degree of convergence—in an interconnected world, societies share both problems and solutions. Socio-legal studies themselves have converged; and share a common intellectual language.     

“The Sulṭān Says”: State Authority in the Late Ḥanafī Tradition

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-278
Author(s):  
Samy Ayoub
Keyword(s):  
Legal Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Assigned Value ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
State Authority ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Law Making

This article investigates the impact of the state on the legal order through an examination of authoritative Ḥanafī legal works from the 17th and 18th centuries CE. By focusing on the madhhab and its juristic discourse, I challenge the reigning narrative in Islamic legal studies by demonstrating how late Ḥanafī jurists assigned value and authority to Ottoman state orders and edicts. This increasing state authority is reflected in the state’s ability to settle juristic disputes, to order jurists and judges to adopt specific opinions in their legal determinations, and to establish its orders as authoritative and final reference points. The incorporation of state orders within authoritative Ḥanafī legal commentaries, treatises, and fatwā collections was made possible by a turn in Ḥanafī legal culture that embraced the indispensability of the state in the law-making process.


scholarly journals URGENCY CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES PARADIGM FOR THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN THE DIVORCE CASE

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 167
Author(s):  
Nita Triana
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Women Victims ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Domestic Violence Victims ◽  
The Law ◽  
Religious Courts

This research describes the protection of women victims of domestic violence in divorce cases. Domestic violence victims are hidden in divorce cases in the Religious Courts. The positivistic paradigm adopted by the Judges gives less protection to victims of domestic violence. The method used in this study is a qualitative method, a type of doctrinal legal research with a socio-legal  approach. Domestic violence victims in the Religious Courts need a new paradigm to provide protection for victims of domestic violence. Religious Court Judges who have a positivistic paradigm see the law as a book (act). The judge in examining the domestic violence in divorce only adheres to the law relating to marriage, namely Law No. 1 of 1974 and Compilation of Islamic Law. Paradigm of Critical Legal Studies. build critical awareness in law enforcement by improving the legal system and carrying out a reformation in the institutions responsible for the protection of victims of domestic violence, one of which is the Religious Courts. Also consider the PKDRT Law No. 23 of 2004 concerning the elimination of domestic violence even covering legal culture of family, community, health and psychological.

Framing “Law and Society” in the Roman World

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Pölönen
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Sociology Of Law ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Legal Science ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Legal Training

Common interests in Roman law have brought Romanists and historians to a close and invaluable dialogue. Whether it is understanding law in a social context or society in light of law, historians without legal training tend to have different expectations about the role played by the law in society than lawyers, and not without controversy. This chapter explores lawyers’ and historians’ approaches to Roman law, and their underlying law and society assumptions, against the background of legal science and sociology of law traditions. It suggests that contemporary socio-legal scholarship, in dialogue with legal science, provides a sound theoretical and methodological framework for the study of law and society in Roman world.

Law, Literature, and the Vanishing Real: On the Future of an Interdisciplinary Illusion

PMLA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 442-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Stone Peters
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Professors

I begin with a story: Some never-to-be-untangled amalgamation of history, caricature, and the truer than true that is fiction. A little over a decade ago, at a great and august university, a group of professors met to talk about law and literature. Most of the literature professors had been Vietnam War protesters, staged sit-ins, marched on Washington. Some of the law professors had spent time in Paris listening to Derrida and smoking Gauloises by the Seine. They had all watched the birth and death of deconstruction, critical legal studies, new historicism, various feminisms (though they weren't positively sure all these were dead). The law professors had been reading Adorno and Althusser; Barthes, Benjamin, and Butler; Deleuze and Derrida. The literature professors had been reading the Critical Legal Studies Reader and Amnesty International reports. The law professors were worried that narratology and post-colonial theory might already be passé. The literature professors were concerned, as a matter of principle.

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