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.     

The Common Law/Civil Law Divide: Residual Truth of a Misleading Distinction

Ⅰ.IntroductionThe contrast between common law and civil law systems of civil justice is often expressed by juxtaposing adversarial and inquisitorial models of procedure.On the conventional understanding of these two models,civil litigation in common law systems then appears as controlled by litigants who present their respectivecases to a passive judge,and its civil law counterpart as controlled by an active judge who conducts an in-quiry into the facts and the law of a dispute.But while these two contrasting models capture many salient