A socio-legal quest: from jurisprudence to sociology of law and back again

How should socio-legal studies view jurisprudence, the legal theory of jurists? Jurisprudence's task is to promote law as a socially valuable idea taking various forms in different times and places. As a value-oriented and context-focused enterprise, it should draw on the social sciences to make its inquiries relevant in a changing socio-legal world. Correspondingly, socio-legal research needs theory to link its empirical inquiries to an overall sense of what can be hoped for from law as a social phenomenon. In different ways, jurisprudence and socio-legal inquiry should help to theorize the nature of legal practice and legal experience. They are necessarily distinct enterprises with contrasting orientations, but they can aid each other in important ways.     

Socio-Legal Studies in 2020

This article looks back to a paper written by the author and Phil Thomas in 2000 on socio-legal studies and reflects on what has changed in the world of socio-legal studies since then. It then turns to the continued modesty of the claims that socio-legal studies researchers make for their work. The suggestion made is that socio-legal studies forms a social ecology in what is termed the ‘hyphen-space’ and that through this space social ecology theory allows much larger claims to be made about how actors and issues at different levels and scales relate to each other. To this end, the article takes an issue, an artefact, and a broad classification of ‘people’ within the sphere of international commercial law to illustrate how social ecology can be used to broaden the claims that research makes.     

The Construction and Demolition of the Luhmann Heresy

Among social theories, autopoiesis achieves an almost unequalled level of complexity and abstraction. Yet this has has not in any way deterred commentators from among the ranks of legal and socio-legal academics from launching critical attacks on the theory. This article argues that many of these detractors miss their mark, because their authors either misinterpret the theory by failing to recognize its radical nature and the new paradigm that it introduces, or, in the more extreme cases, project onto the theory immoral or irrational ambitions which are nowhere to be found in the writings of Niklas Luhmann or other autopoietic theorists. All this brings to mind Nabokov's novel Pale Fire, which also is concerned with criticism, projection and misinterpretation (as well as self-reference and insanity). In that novel the text is a poem, while the plot, concerning a paranoid literary critic, unfolds in the notes commenting on this poem. This article reverses this device by placing the main commentaries and criticisms in the main text and the `autopoietry', extracts from the writings of autopoietic scholars, which form the subject of the critical attacks, in the footnotes.     

Law,psychology, and the "new sciences": rethinking mental illness and dangerousness

Clinical and legal research on the meaning of mental illness and on definitions (and predictions) of dangerousness continue to offer the mental health law arena mostly disappointing results. In this article, the authors argue that much of this failure is linked to the prevailing Newtonian paradigm of cause-effect relationships, linear logic, and absolute order. In its place, the authors draw attention to the "new sciences"; that is, advances generated from quantum physics and chaos theory. To situate the analysis, the authors explore how psycholegal decision making unfolds. Specifically, the authors examine what contributions the new sciences offer society on the nature and meaning of psychiatric disorder and on the forecasting of violence. Along the way, the authors suggest how the new sciences advance the regard for citizen justice within the domain of mental health law.     

A Socio-Legal Approach to Administrative Justice

The first part of this article outlines two complementary approaches to enhancing administrative justice. Internal mechanisms, which can be put into place by government departments and public bodies themselves, are contrasted with external mechanisms, which result in the imposition on government departments and public bodies of principles enunciated by courts, tribunals, and ombudsmen. Lawyers are all too familiar with the external approach but tend to be much less familiar with the internal approach. The article seeks to redress this imbalance. It emphasizes the importance of the internal approach, not as an alternative but, rather, as a complement to the external approach and develops a framework for analyzing administrative justice in terms of "trade-offs" between different normative models of administrative decision-making. The second part of the article demonstrates how this approach to the study of administrative justice has informed research on the impact of computerization on social security in the United Kingdom; on decision making in the Scottish prison system; on the assessment of special educational needs in England and Scotland; and on the computerization of social security in thirteen countries. The article concludes by attempting to show that this approach to the study of administrative justice satisfies all the defining characteristics of the socio-legal paradigm.     

Rules,Institutions, Transformations. Considerations on the “Evolution of Law” Paradigm

The article's main objective is to test the merits of the evolutionary paradigm as it has been applied first to social phenomena and then more specifically to the legal domain. In a preliminary move, a set of the available concepts of law is worked out. A discussion of the idea of evolution and of its use in the social sciences follows. Functionalism and systems theory are scrutinized, with a close eye to the new doctrine of “autopoiesis.” Once an institutional and normative concept of law is agreed upon, attempts to introduce an “evolutionary” paradigm are deemed—the article contends—to be unfruitful. The article concludes that, if law needs a metaphysics, it should be one which allows for change, transformation and the emergence of the radically new. A social universe without gaps, all possible forms of which are determined from the beginning, will end up as the opposite of what we are used to considering as the practice of law.     

Philosophical Criminology and Complex Systems Science: Towards a Critical Theory of Justice

Chaos theory (or complex systems science, CSS) has made considerable inroads across a range of social science disciplines, including criminology. However, little has been done to assess the relevance of chaos theory for advancing a philosophical criminology. This task is significant because it tells us something about where, how, and why most modernist theories of crime are of limited utility when advancing the interests of justice and humanism in society. Accordingly, this article outlines the essential features of a philosophical criminology, including its commitments to ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics. Moreover, the contexts in which several key chaos theory principles such as iteration, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, bifurcations, attractors, fractal space, and dissipative structures function to promote a philosophical criminology are explored. A number of implications stemming from this analysis for purposes of critical theory building in law, crime, and justice studies are provisionally delineated.

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Interest in technology transfer across academic disciplines: Publication trends, 1981 Thru 1989

Interest in technology transfer across academic disciplines highlights this paper. We reviewed an abstracting service via computer for the years 1981 thru 1989, concentrating on publication titles that included any of four key terms: diffusion of innovation; intrapreneurshipl internal corporate venturing; and technology transfer. This computerized search located 828 pages in science and engineering and 1765 pages in the social sciences. In science and engineering, about 44% of the pages relate to specific cases of technology transfer, and about 27% have an international focus. The opposite is true in the social sciences: cases comprise about 25% of the pages, while 55% have an international focus. Economics, with 470 pages, dominates the writings within the social sciences, as well as elsewhere. In science and engineering, three areas published the most: electrical engineering (147 pages), agriculture (127), and multidisciplinary science (126). The findings suggest that researchers interested in technology transfer would benefit by adopting a multidisciplinary perspective. His experience in technology transfer includes work as a research aerodynamicist for Bell Helicopter Company. More recently he has focused on the marketing problems associated with new products from the federal laboratory system. He has been editor of the Marketing Educator.     

Interdisciplinarity and the Authority Paradigm: Should Law Be Taken Seriously by Scientists and Social Scientists?

This article questions whether those outside law should take law seriously as an intellectual discipline capable of contributing to the development of epistemological thinking in the natural and social sciences. The discipline is approached from a diachronic and synchronic position with emphasis on the civil law tradition. It will be shown that the governing paradigm in legal studies has always been the 'authority paradigm', which results in law being closer to theology than to the social sciences. Its principal actors (judges) make assertions free from the normal constraints of scientific method; accordingly, the idea of a 'legal science' (imported into the common law tradition after 1846) must be treated with great caution. It is not a science dedicated to enquiring about the nature of the physical world, society or social relations. Its epistemological development remains trapped in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: thus, as a discipline, law has little to offer other social sciences.     

The Sociology of Law in France: Trends and Paradigms

To suggest that French legal sociology is a field in which a dominant theoretical tendency is identifiable is misleading; equally, attempts to provide insight into the work achieved in French socio-legal studies which presuppose that a complete inventory of the field must be undertaken are misguided. In this article, an exposition of French legal sociology is attempted using different means: following a brief history of the evolution of socio-legal studies in France, the authors suggest different paradigms around which French researchers appear to converge. Eight paradigms are identified, covering the majority of French sociologists and jurists. The article concludes with an analysis of some characteristics of socio-legal studies in general, within the framework of French intellectual and academic life.     

Policy, Research, and Funding: Socio Legal Studies in a changed Political Climate

In the current conservative political climate in Britain, the USA and elsewhere, spcio-legal scholars are under increasing pressure to display explicitly the practical relevance and usefulness of their research. 'Relevance' is usually taken to be indicated by the capacity of research findings to change social policy or to foreclose certain courses of action. But it is also important to turn the question around and as well as asking about the extent to which socio-legal research has changed governmental policies, we should always bear in mind that governmental policies, particularly about modes of funding, may change the character and fundamental utility of socio-legal research. The discussion is illustrated by reference to recent experience at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University.     

试论斯塔茨的心理学整合观

在物理学等自然科学、库恩的范式论以及追求宏大理论的心理学家的影响下,斯塔茨开始了整合心理学的探索.他提出了统一的实证主义作为统一的科学哲学,主张行为主义化心理学和心理学化行为主义,并最终将其整合观称为心理行为主义,提出了统一心理学的具体策略即多水平的理论与方法.     

Is it complex environments or complex systems that undermines police reform in developing countries?

This article is a reflection upon the challenges facing police reform in developing countries. In doing so it explores the usefulness of complexity theory both to understand the evidence of relative failure and to reconsider the explanations offered for that failure in terms of unique individual factors or the complex nature of the environment. The article suggests that the nature of police organisations as complex social systems may be a principal reason for failure. The article outlines some of the key features of complex systems and illustrates these from actual police reform. The article then turns to whether complexity theory can be of any practical use in police reform programmes. It concludes that greater success may be forthcoming if the insights of complexity theory are taken on board by reformers.     

Peacemaking Criminology

This is an overview of the work of criminologists that informs how people build trust, safe and social security in the face of violent social differences. The article begins with a story of how the term “peacemaking” came to “criminology.” A theory of peacemaking emerging from this beginning is then stated, including a review of criminological literature that informs the theory. The theory is grounded in a paradigmatic departure from criminology’s tradition—the study of crime and criminality—to proposing instead of studying what replaces human separation with cooperation and mutual trust. This paradigm implies that stories of dispute handling are its most authoritative data, especially stories people tell about their own relations. It also implies new ways of evaluating the fruits of adopting a peacemaking paradigm for learning and living.     

‘Left Pessimists’ in ‘Rose Coloured Glasses’? Reflections on the Political Economy of Socio-Legal Studies and (Legal) Academic Well-Being

This article reflects on the significance of the Journal of Law and Society and critical socio-legal work in the context of changes in the political economy of universities and socio-legal studies. It interweaves an analysis of this shifting political economy with consideration of another topic, namely, academic well-being and mental health, especially in this moment, to demonstrate the continuing pertinence and importance of the left critique of universities. Well-being has become part of a far broader set of counter-narratives to neoliberalism evident in attempts to reposition it as a ‘force of change’, to develop new ways of working that might challenge traditional work cultures and organizational structures, and to resist the marketized neoliberal university and re-envision what a ‘good university’ might be. Rejecting the criticism of ‘left pessimists’ in ‘rose coloured glasses’, I make the case for the continuing significance of engaging in public education and research as a public good.     

Legal Theory and Sociological Facts

The authors investigate MacCormick and Weinberger's claim that the Institutional Theory of Law provides a conceptual framework for the study of legal phenomena from a socio-legal point of view. They evaluate this claim by confronting both the Institutional Theory of Law and Weinberger's theory of action with two approaches in socio-legal theory, i.e. the instrumentalist and the constitutive approach. The conclusion is that the Institutional Theory of Law lends itself to empirical research from an instrumentalist perspective, for both place the concept institution in the context of law. Weinberger's theory of action may provide a basis for empirical research from a constitutive perspective. The authors make some suggestions for refinement of Weinberger's theory of action in order that the relation between institutions and action can be labeled dynamic.     

Cause and Effect: The Free Speech Transformation as Scientific Revolution

The model of direct, cause-and-effect speech was common not only in the social sciences early in the twentieth century, but also in the law. Speech-restrictive measures were written and judged with the belief that words may be the explicit cause of undesirable behavior. This article examines the transformation in free speech doctrine and its parallel track with the emergence of the social sciences. At the core of each was a change from direct- to limited-effects frameworks. It is posited that the paradigm shift in the law qualifies as a scientific revolution given (1) how it comports with the model explained by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and (2) its adherence to scientific method.     

Native American Identity and the Limits of Cultural Defence

This article concerns itself with the phenomenon of the cultural defence as it exhibits itself in the US juridical context. Recent socio-legal discussions about this phenomenon reveal three prevalent positions: the illegality of cultural defence on constitutional grounds, the necessity of cultural defence as a matter of discretionary justice, and the intermediary position of working cultural defence into a legal doctrine. By problematizing the operative concept of culture, the author suggests that the idea of cultural defence should be understood in terms of foreignness. This suggestion is supported on the basis of the phenomenological theory of the alien (xenology). In order to illustrate the juridical limits of the cultural defence I examine the history of constructing the Native American as a cultural legal subject. Hence the question that primes this examination: is there a possibility of the traditional cultural defence for the American Indians? After a provisional answer that there is no such possibility, I conclude with the discussion of hospitality as a way to an ethically necessary and legally acceptable idea of culture.     

The lore of sexual difference in social and legal discourse on ‘date rape’

Using a framework informed by Foucauldian discourse theory and feminist accounts of sexual difference, this paper investigates the process of attrition in cases initially recorded as rape and in which complainant and suspect are known to each other. Having particular regard to police and prosecutor decision-making in the processing of such cases, the authors consider discourses that utilise conceptions of sexual difference, which work to normalise and privilege cultural assumptions about male desires and conduct in sexual relations. In illuminating the manner in which the traditional binary categories of sexual difference is put to work, the authors argue that socio-legal debates over the phenomenon commonly described as ‘date rape’ have over-simplistically inverted these categories. The authors further argue that this inversion operates to women's detriment and fails to advance a sufficiently nuanced understanding of complex issues implicated in rapes committed against women by men they know. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.