Subverting Orthodoxy, Making Law Central - A View of Sociolegal Studies

Oct 3, 2026

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Roger Cotterrell discusses how sociolegal research should meet the expectations of diverse scholarly constituencies by sustaining moral and political critique alongside theoretical and empirical analysis of law’s social consequences and origins. The article argues for new theoretical forms highlighting multiple modes of regulation and their moral foundations, while tracing law’s routine structuring of social life and its evolving role when regulating community relations beyond national jurisdictional reach. It also sets the debate agenda for sociolegal studies in Britain.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Directions for sociolegal studies in Britain

Conditions shaping sociolegal scholarship

From orthodox doctrinal legal commentary to sociological approaches

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY VOLUME 29, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 2002 ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 632–44 Subverting Orthodoxy, Making Law Central: A View of Sociolegal Studies Roger Cotterrell* The promise of sociolegal research varies for different constituencies. For some legal scholars it has been a promise of sustained commitment to moral and political critique of law and to theoretical and empirical analysis of law’s social consequences and origins. To continue to deliver on that promise today, sociolegal studies should develop theory in new forms emphasizing the variety of forms of regulation and the moral foundations on which that regulation ultimately depends. It should demonstrate and explore law’s roles in the routine structuring of all aspects of social life and its changing character as it faces the challenge of regulating relations of community not bounded solely by the jurisdictional reach of nation states. INTRODUCTION What directions should sociolegal studies in Britain take today? To accept an invitation to debate this issue is to risk the possibility that one’s choice of priorities will seem bizarre or just irrelevant to others whose involvement with the field is different. Everyone seriously concerned with sociolegal scholarship has a view of its potential, a view coloured by ambitions or dissatisfactions that first led to involvement with sociolegal work. Institutional work location also affects the nature of each person’s ongoing involvement. An important reason for the vitality of the sociolegal community in Britain, as of the law and society community in the United States of America, has surely been its rich, almost anarchic heterogeneity * Department of Law, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, England The following papers by Professors Cotterrell and Hillyard were delivered at the SocioLegal Studies Association Annual Conference 2002 . They were jointly commissioned for publication in the Journal of Law and Society in order to stimulate discussion about the nature, role, and future of socio-legal studies. 632 ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA and its consistent openness to many different aims, outlooks, and disciplinary backgrounds.1 Perhaps it is undesirable to argue that such afield should tilt in any particular direction. At the very least, anyone expressing general views about the sociolegal enterprise should surely reveal the conditioning background factors that provide a context and perhaps a partial explanation for those views. Here, briefly, are some of those factors. With many other legal academics, what this writer initially sought from sociolegal work was a set of new perspectives on law to allow a breakout from the claustrophobic world of legal scholarship and education, as previously encountered. Most legal study, in my experience as a law undergraduate and postgraduate at the end of the 1960s, seemed to focus on technicality as an end in itself and was unconcerned with fundamental questions about law’s nature, sources, and consequences as a social phenomenon or about its moral groundings. Valuejudgements pervading legal studies cried out for theoretical examination but were routinely treated as obviously correct or simply unrecognized. Policy argument, the ‘unruly horse’2 that judges were sometimes forced to ride, was not considered to be ‘real’ legal reasoning and so not given serious attention in the law school, legal study being seen as confined to interpreting rules and analysing their logical or plausible interrelations. Moral argument was to be disposed of quickly so that sophisticated legal thinking could begin. Legislation, an unfortunate necessity, was often presented as a salutary warning about the results of amateur (non-lawyers’) dabbling in lawmaking. To draw seriously on knowledge-fields beyond the contents of the law reports was suspect and t

FAQs

What promise does sociolegal research offer, according to the article?

It offers sustained moral and political critique of law as well as theoretical and empirical analysis of law’s social consequences and origins.

What theoretical development does the article call for in sociolegal studies?

Sociolegal studies should develop theory in new forms that emphasize the variety of regulation and the moral foundations those forms ultimately depend on.

How does the article describe the shift from orthodox legal scholarship?

It contrasts orthodox doctrinal commentary focused on interpreting rules with an approach that engages social science and rejects boundary claims between academic disciplines.

Oct 3, 2026

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