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This book presents a unified set of arguments about the nature of jurisprudence and its relation to the jurist’s role. It explores contemporary challenges that create a need for social scientific perspectives in jurisprudence, and it shows how sociological resources can and should be used in considering juristic issues. Its overall aim is to redefine the concept of sociological jurisprudence and outline a new agenda for this. Supporting this agenda, the book elaborates a distinctive juristic perspective that recognises law’s diversity of cultural meanings, its extending transnational reach, its responsibilities to reflect popular aspirations for justice and security, and its integrative tasks as a general resource of regulation for society as a whole and for the individuals who interact under law’s protection. Drawing on and extending the author’s previous work, the book will be essential reading for students, researchers and academics working in jurisprudence, law and society, socio-legal studies, sociology of law, and comparative legal studies.
Law is generally understood to be a mirror of society that functions to maintain social order. Focusing on this general understanding, this text conducts a survey of Western legal and social theories about law and its relationship within society.
The book is the most comprehensive in its area and analyses many jurisdictions that have received little attention.
That discrimination exists in courts of law is beyond dispute. In American murder cases, for instance, studies show that blacks who kill a white are much more likely to receive the death penalty than if they kill a black. Indeed, in Georgia, they are 30 times more likely to be condemned, and in Texas a staggering 90 times more likely. Conversely, in Texas, of 143 whites convicted of killing a black, only one was sentenced to die. But how extensive is discrimination in the courtroom? Is it strictly a matter of racial prejudice, or does it respond to a wide range of social factors? In Sociological Justice, eminent legal sociologist Donald Black challenges the conventional notion that law is primarily an affair of rules and that discrimination is an aberration. Law, he contends, is a social process in which bias is inherent. Indeed, Black goes well beyond the documented instances of racial discrimination to show how social status (regardless of race), the degree of intimacy (are they family members, friends, or complete strangers?), speech, organization, and numerous other factors all greatly influence whether a complaint will be filed in court, who will win, and what the punishment or other remedy will be. Moreover, he extends his analysis to include not only the litigants, but also the lawyers, the jurors, and the judge, describing how their social characteristics can also influence a case. Sociological Justice introduces a new field of legal scholarship that will have important consequences for the future of law: the sociology of the case. Black discusses how lawyers can use the sociology of the case to improve their practice and, for those interested in reform, he suggests ways to minimize bias in the courtroom. Beyond this, Black demonstrates that modern jurisprudence, with its assumption that like cases will be treated in like fashion, is out of touch with reality. He urges the adoption of a new sociological jurisprudence, with a new morality of law, that explicitly addresses the social relativity of justice. A major contribution to legal scholarship, this thought-provoking volume is essential reading for anyone interested in law and justice in modern society.
This book proposes the study of norms as a method of explaining human choice and behaviour by introducing a new scientific perspective. The science of norms may here be broadly understood as a social science which includes elements from both the behavioural and legal sciences. It is given that a science of norms is not normative in the sense of prescribing what is right or wrong in various situations. Compared with legal science, sociology of law has an interest in the operational side of legal rules and regulation. This book develops a synthesizing social science approach to better understand societal development in the wake of the increasingly significant digital technology. The underlying idea is that norms as expectations today are not primarily related to social expectations emanating from human interactions but come from systems that mankind has created for fulfilling its needs. Today the economy, via the market, and technology via digitization, generate stronger and more frequent expectations than the social system. By expanding the sociological understanding of norms, the book makes comparisons between different parts of society possible and creates a more holistic understanding of contemporary society. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers in the areas of sociology of law, legal theory, philosophy of law, sociology and social psychology.
This unique Research Handbook maps the historical, theoretical, and methodological concepts in sociology of law, exploring the rich and complex nature of this area of research. It argues that sociology of law flourishes due to its strong capacity for interdisciplinary engagement and links to other scientific concepts, methodologies and research fields.