What happens to legal thought when key terms-society, culture, power, justice, identity-become unsettled? With the boundaries defining sociolegal scholarship undergoing a profound shift, this book explores the intersections of law, culture, and identity. Sexuality, race, sports, and the politics of policing are among the topics the authors take up as they examine how law both reproduces and challenges fundamental notions of order, discipline, and identity. Contributors: Rosemary J. Coombe, U of Toronto; David M. Engel, SUNY, Buffalo; Marjorie Garber, Harvard U; Herman Gray, UC, Santa Cruz; Rona Tamiko Halualani, San José State U; David Harvey, CUNY; Deb Henderson; Yuen J. Huo, UCLA; S. Lily Mendoza, U of Denver; Trish Oberweis, American Justice Institute; Paul A. Passavant, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Lisa E. Sanchez, U of Illinois; Carl F. Stychin, U of Reading; Tom R. Tyler, New York U; Christine A. Yalda.

Divided into three parts, this book examines the relationship between law and culture from various perspectives, both theoretical and empirical. Part I outlines the framework for further considerations and includes new, innovative conceptualizations of two ideas that are essential to the topic of law and culture: legal culture and customary law. Both of these reappear later in the more empirically oriented chapters of Parts II and III. Part II includes chapters on the relationships between law, customs, and culture, drawing heavily on the tradition and achievements of the anthropology of law and touching on important problems of multiculturalism, legal pluralism, and cultural defense. It focuses on the more intangible meaning of culture, while Part III addresses its more material, tangible aspects and the issue of cultural production, as well as its intersection with law.

This book presents a distinctive approach to the study of law in society, focusing on the sociological interpretation of legal ideas. It surveys the development of connections between legal studies and social theory and locates its approach in relation to sociolegal studies on the one hand and legal philosophy on the other. It is suggested that the concept of law must be re-considered. Law has to be seen today not just as the law of the nation state, or international law that links nation states, but also as transnational law in many forms. A legal pluralist approach is not just a matter of redefining law in legal theory; it also recognizes that law's authority comes from a plurality of diverse, sometimes conflicting, social sources. The book suggests that the social environment in which law operates must also be rethought, with many implications for comparative legal studies. The nature and boundaries of culture become important problems, while the concept of multiculturalism points to the cultural diversity of populations and to problems of fragmentation, or perhaps to new kinds of unity of the social. Theories of globalization raise a host of issues about the integrity of societies and about the need to understand social networks and forces that extend beyond the political societies of nation states. Through a range of specific studies, closely interrelated and building on each other, the book seeks to integrate the sociology of law with other kinds of legal analysis and engages directly with current juristic debates in legal theory and comparative law.

This pioneering book explores the intersections of law and culture at the International Criminal Court (ICC), offering insights into how notions of culture affect the Court’s legal foundations, functioning and legitimacy, both in theory and in practice.

"Oscar G. Chase studies the American legal system in the manner of an anthropologist. By comparing American 'dispute ways' with those of other systems, including some commonly believed to be more 'primitive, ' he finds interesting similarities that challenge the premise that we live in a society regulated by a rational and just 'rule of law.'" --New York Law Journal"A witty and engaging endeavor. . . . A good contribution to our professional knowledge, and it is a must reading." --Law and Politics Book Review"After reading Law, Culture, and Ritual, no one could ever again think that our legal proceedings are nothing more than an efficient method of discovering truth and applying law. Oscar Chase effectively uses a comparative approach to help us to step back from our legal practices and see just how steeped in myths, rituals and traditions they are. Scholars will want to read this book for its contribution to comparative law, but everyone interested in American culture should read this book. Chase shows us that there is no separating law from culture: each informs and maintains the other. Law, Culture, and Ritual is a major step forward in the rapidly expanding field of the cultural study of law." --Paul Kahn, author of The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship"Having allowed ourselves to be convinced (wrongly) that we are the most litigious people in the world, Americans have become obsessed with finding (quick) cures. Oscar Chase's book sounds a salutary warning. By presenting striking comparative examples that shatter our parochialism, he forces us to examine the cultural roots of dispute processes." --Richard Abel, Connell Professor of Law, UCLA LawSchoolDisputing systems are products of the societies in which they operate - they originate and mutate in respons

This book examines whether law, as a cultural practice, can apply across cultural boundaries to bind people with vastly different beliefs and practices.

Large law firms have become a dominant feature of the legal landscape in the United States and elsewhere. This volume of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society examines the situation of large law firms.

Mirosław Michał Sadowski is Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland; Affiliated Researcher at the Centre for Global Studies, Alberta University in Lisbon, Portugal; Postdoctoral Researcher at CEBRAP – Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning in São Paulo, Brazil; Research Assistant at the Institute of Legal Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.

Awareness of the need to deepen the method and methodology of legal research is only recent. The same is true for comparative law, by nature a more adventurous branch of legal research, which is often something researchers simply do, whenever they look at foreign legal systems to answer one or more of a range of questions about law, whether these questions are doctrinal, economic, sociological, etc. Given the diversity of comparative research projects, the precise contours of the methods employed, or the epistemological issues raised by them, are to a great extent a function of the nature of the research questions asked. As a result, the search for a unique, one-size-fits-all comparative law methodology is unlikely to be fruitful. That however does not make reflection on the method and culture of comparative law meaningless. Mark Van Hoecke has, throughout his career, been interested in many topics, but legal theory, comparative law and methodology of law stand out. Building upon his work, this book brings together a group of leading authors working at the crossroads of these themes: the method and culture of comparative law. With contributions by: Maurice Adams, John Bell, Joxerramon Bengoetxea, Roger Brownsword, Seán Patrick Donlan, Rob van Gestel and Hans Micklitz, Patrick Glenn, Jaap Hage, Dirk Heirbaut, Jaakko Husa, Souichirou Kozuka and Luke Nottage, Martin Löhnig, Susan Millns, Toon Moonen, Francois Ost, Heikki Pihlajamäki, Geoffrey Samuel, Mathias Siems, Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, Catherine Valcke and Matthew Grellette, Alain Wijffels.

Queer Theory: Law, Culture Empire takes up the instability of the label 'queer' in order to consider what queer theory can bring to an exploration of the confines and openings provided by law, culture, and empire.