The first half of the book explores theoretical issues surrounding the enterprise of socio-legal research, its current scope, and its historical traditions. Some chapters directly compare juristic theory and socio-legal inquiry. Chapters in Part II profile a selection of European jurists whose work offers important insights for socio-legal inquiry. Other chapters frame these studies, explore the history of interactions between jurisprudence and socio-legal research, and show points of convergence between these fields that are increasingly important today. A main aim of the book is to show the current urgency of linking and broadening juristic and social scientific interests in law.
Internationally oriented, the book will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of jurisprudence, legal philosophy, sociology of law, socio-legal studies, and comparative law. It is suitable as supplementary reading for courses in any of these subjects.
Roger Cotterrell is Anniversary Professor of Legal Theory at Queen Mary University of London. Educated as both a lawyer and a sociologist, he has written widely on jurisprudence, sociology of law, and comparative law, and has devoted much of his career to building conversations between the contrasting traditions of jurisprudence and sociology of law. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. His book Sociological Jurisprudence, published by Routledge in 2018, won the international Dennis Mahoney Prize for Legal Theory in 2022.