Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-26T18:57:16.736Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Critical Traditions in Law and Society Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Susan S. Silbey  and
Austin Sarat
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This paper examines the place of critical inquiry within law and society studies. It suggests that such inquiry requires a periodic reexamination of both methodological and theoretical assumptions. In terms of method, critical inquiry would emphasize the particular and intensive as opposed to the general and extensive. In terms of theory, it calls attention to the limits of state legality and invites attention to ordinary social transactions in which the law appears invisible but is nonetheless powerful. The authors argue that it is possible to be both critical and empirical.

Type
Commentary
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , 1987 , pp. 165 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

This article is, with minor revisions, the “Plenary Session Address” presented by Susan S. Silbey at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Chicago, May 30, 1986.

References

ABEL, Richard (1973) “Law Books and Books about Law,” 26 Stanford Law Review 175.Google Scholar
BERGER, Peter, and Thomas, LUCKMANN (1966) The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
BLOCH, Marc (1961) Feudal Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
DERRIDA, Jacques (1978) “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in J. Derrida, Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 278.Google Scholar
ENGEL, David (1983) “Cases, Conflict and Accommodation: Patterns of Legal Interaction in an American Community,” 1983 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 803.Google Scholar
FOUCAULT, Michel (1980) Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
FOUCAULT, Michel (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Lawrence, FRIEDMAN (1986) “The Law and Society Movement,” 38 Stanford Law Review 763.Google Scholar
GOULDNER, Alvin (1979) The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Seabury Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GREENHOUSE, Carol J. (1982) “Looking at Culture, Looking for Rules,” 17 Man 58.Google Scholar
GUSFIELD, Joseph (1981) The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
HAYEK, Friedrich (1960) The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
LOCKE, John (1960) Two Treatises of Government, ed. P. Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
MANNHEIM, Karl (1936) Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
MERRY, Sally Engle (1979) “Going to Court: Strategies of Dispute Management in an American Urban Neighborhood,” 13 Law & Society Review 891.Google Scholar
PELLER, Gary (1985) “The Metaphysics of Law,” 73 California Law Review 1151.Google Scholar
RORTY, Richard (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
SARAT, Austin (1985) “Legal Effectiveness and Social Studies of Law,” 9 Legal Studies Forum 23.Google Scholar
SILBEY, Susan S. (1984a) “The Consequences of Responsive Regulation,” in Thomas, J. and Hawkins, K. (eds.), Enforcing Regulation. Boston, Kluwer Nijhof.Google Scholar
SILBEY, Susan S. (1984b) “Who Speaks for the Consumer?” 1984 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 429.Google Scholar
SILBEY, Susan S. (1981) “Case Processing: Consumer Protection in an Attorney General's Office,” 15 Law & Society Review 849.Google Scholar
SILBEY, Susan S., and Bittner, Egon (1982) “The Availability of Law,” 4 Law and Policy Quarterly 399.Google Scholar
UNGER, Roberto (1975) Knowledge and Politics. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
TRUBEK, David (1984) “Where the Action Is: Critical Legal Studies and Empiricism,” 36 Stanford Law Review 575.Google Scholar