Intellectual Property Law and Sociolegal Studies

In recent years, scholarship in the field of intellectual property (IP) has moved in many creative and important directions—as the chapters in this volume illustrate well. One of the most promising developments in IP scholarship is the recognition of the need to explore this area of law and practice from interdisciplinary perspectives, moving beyond the still-dominant doctrinal and law and economics-based approaches to the field. This chapter explores and advocates for a sociolegal—and in particular, a ‘law and society’—approach to the study of IP in social, historical, and cultural context. The chapter also argues for the need to employ a broad range of methodologies, including empirical approaches, for understanding IP in context, explaining how qualitative interviews are a promising research tool in this field. The chapter critiques a narrow notion of ‘empirical’ legal studies that often uncritically assumes that ‘empirical’ encompasses only quantitative approaches to the study of law and legal processes, actors, and institutions.

Milestones and Directions: Socio-Legal Studies in Germany and the United Kingdom

Under the headings of “Rechtssoziologie” in Germany and “sociolegal studies” in the UK, scholarly traditions have developed that relate law to its social environment. This Article identifies key stages in the development the subject took in both countries and the directions of travel. Comparable milestones were passed, and directions were taken in Germany and the UK. This includes the institutionalization of the subject along the lines of programmatic texts; becoming part of university education; and the establishment of research institutes, academic associations, and specialized journals. The development tells us something beyond sociology of law or sociolegal studies, namely about the relation of law and sociology, the parent disciplines themselves, as well as about academic studies and professional and institutional practice. However, in contrast to the UK, there is still more of a distance between the sociology of law and jurisprudence in Germany.

From Foreign Text to Local Meaning: The Politics of Religious Exclusion in Transnational Constitutional Borrowing

Constitutional drafters often look to foreign constitutional models, ideas, and texts for inspiration; many are explicit about their foreign borrowing. However, when implemented domestically, the meaning of borrowed elements often changes. Political scientists and scholars of comparative constitutional law have analyzed the transnational movement of constitutional ideas and norms, but the political processes through which the meaning of foreign provisions might be refashioned remain understudied. Sociolegal scholars have examined the “transplantation” and “translation” of laws and legal institutions, but they rarely scrutinize this process in the context of constitutions. Drawing on an examination of borrowed constitutional elements in four cases (Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt, Israel), this article builds on research in comparative politics, comparative constitutional law, and sociolegal studies to provide a nuanced picture of deliberate efforts to import “inclusive” constitutional provisions regarding religion-state relations while, at the same time, refashioning the meaning of those provisions in ways that “exclude” specific forms of religious, sectarian, doctrinal, or ideological diversity. Building on sociolegal studies regarding the translation of law, we argue that foreign constitutional elements embraced by politically embedded actors are often treated as “empty signifiers” with meanings that are deliberately transformed. Tracing the processes that lead political actors to engage foreign constitutional elements, even if they have no intention of transplanting their prior meaning, we highlight the need for detailed case studies to reveal both the international and the national dynamics that shape and reshape the meaning of constitutions today.

From Food Chains to Food Webs: Regulating Capitalist Production and Consumption in the Food System

This review addresses food as a topic of sociolegal studies. We show that the divide between production and consumption in law and social science is increasingly untenable in the context of contemporary globalizing, industrializing food chains underpinned by a productivist ideology and supported by a consumptogenic cultural economy. Sociolegal studies of food are well-suited to grappling with the complexity of production–consumption dynamics through regulatory governance studies of hybridized (public and private) supply chain standards. Yet we argue for an expanded focus on the embeddedness of food chains in social, political, and, importantly, ecological food webs. We suggest that sociolegal studies into ecologically based regulation, countermovements, and an expansive version of the human right to food (that includes nature and animals) can particularly contribute to an understanding of the possibilities for regulating capitalism by seeking to constrain globalizing, industrialized food chains.

Still Afraid of Legal Pluralism? Encountering Santi Romano

The second edition of Santi Romano’s book, The Legal Order, now appearing in its first English translation (2017), is a pioneer text of legal pluralism. Its interest lies in its extreme radicalism and in the fact that, although it is written by a lawyer, its argument has many important political implications and addresses core conceptual issues in contemporary sociolegal studies of legal pluralism. The social and political context of Romano’s book in early twentieth-century Italy is far from being solely of historical interest. Issues that surrounded his juristic thinking in its time resonate with important political and social issues of today.

Esthetics and Methods in the Study of Sexual Rights

The study of sexuality has been and remains a seminal project for Social & Legal Studies. This article utilizes the political/esthetic theory of Jacques Rancière in order to explore the dimensions of this project as an intervention in the field of sociolegal studies from the Journal’s inception to contemporary concerns. Early studies of sexuality in the Journal developed three methodological themes: law as deconstructable process, as consequential for the performative aspects of nonessentialized identities, and as potentially destabilized by highly mobile rights claiming. This article seeks to understand whether this unique agenda for the study of gender, sexuality, and law remains viable. It concludes that the nonessentialist fluidity of gender and sexuality which framed early approaches to the study of the consequences of rights and the relationship of sexual and gender identity requires renewed attention to the structures of race, colonialism, and imperialism enabling and enabled by contemporary queer critique.