"This work will be very valuable for academic and public libraries supporting prelaw, law, social, and cultural studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through professionals/practitioners; general readers." —CHOICE There are two aspects of scholarship about the legal systems of our day that are especially salient—one being for the first time there is a fair amount of genuine research on legal systems, and two, that this research is increasingly global. As soon as you cross a jurisdictional line, even if it separates countries that are very similar, you enter a different legal system. It cannot be assumed that any particular rule, doctrine, or practice is the same in any two jurisdictions, regardless of how close these jurisdictions are, in terms of history and tradition. The Encyclopedia of Law and Society is the largest comprehensive and international treatment of the law and society field. With an Advisory Board of 62 members from 20 countries and six continents, the three volumes of this state-of-the-art resource represent interdisciplinary perspectives on law from sociology, criminology, cultural anthropology, political science, social psychology, and economics. By globalizing the Encyclopedia′s coverage, American and international law and society will be better understood within its historical and comparative context. Key Features: Includes more than 700 biographical entries that are historical, comparative, topical, thematic, and methodological Presents the rich diversity of European, Latin American, Asian, African, and Australasian developments for the first time in one place to reveal the truly holistic, interdisciplinary virtues of law and society Examines how and why legal systems grow and change, how and why they respond (or fail to respond) to their environment, how and why they impact the life of society, and how and why the life of society impacts in turn these legal systems With borders more porous than ever before, this Encyclopedia reflects the paradoxical reality of modern life, including legal life. This valuable resource aims to present research, along with the theories on which it is grounded, fairly and comprehensively and is a must-have for all academic libraries.

This textbook on the sociology of law is organised according to the theoretical traditions of sociology, and oriented towards providing an accessible, but sophisticated, introduction to, and overview of, the central themes, problems and debates in this field. The book employs an international range of examples - including the state, minority rights, terrorism, family violence, the legal profession, pornography, mediation, religious tolerance, and euthanasia - in order to distinguish a sociological approach to law from 'black-letter', jurisprudential and empirical policy-oriented traditions. Beginning with 'classical', 'consensus' and 'critical' sociological approaches, the book covers the full range of contemporary perspectives, including the new institutionalism, feminism, the interpretive tradition, postmodernism, legal pluralism and globalisation. It then concludes with a consideration of current theoretical issues, as well as a reflection upon the importance of a sociological approach to law. Understanding Law and Society provides a clear, but critical, discussion of the relevant literature, along with study questions and guides to further reading. It is designed to support courses in law and society and in the sociology of law, but will also be of value to others with interests in these areas.

Introduction to and survey of the field of law and society. Includes interdisciplinary perspectives on law from sociology, criminology, cultural anthropology, political science, social psychology, and economics.

This collection of socio-legal studies, written by leading theorists and researchers from around the world, offers original, perceptive and critical contributions to ideas and theories that have been expounded by Roger Cotterrell over a long and distinguished career. Engaging with many classic issues and theories of the sociology of law, the contributions are likely to become classics themselves as they tackle some of the most significant challenges that modern law faces. They do not shy away from what one of the contributors describes as the complexity and multiplicity of our contemporary legal world. The book is organized in three parts: socio-legal themes; methodological and jurisprudential themes; globalization, cultural and comparative law themes. Starting with a chapter that re-engages with the need to interpret legal ideas sociologically, and ending with one that explores the global significance of modern fascination with the idea of the rule of law, this selection offers important additions to the oeuvre of Roger Cotterrell (a list of whose academic writings is included in the book).

This book assembles essays on legal sociology and legal history by an international group of distinguished scholars. All of them have been influenced by the eminent and prolific legal historian, legal sociologist and scholar of comparative law, Lawrence M. Friedman. Not just a Festschrift of essays by colleagues and disciples, this volume presents a sustained examination and application of Friedman's ideas and methods. Together, the essays in this volume show the powerful ripple effects of Friedman's work on American and comparative legal sociology, American and comparative legal history and the general sociology of law and legal change.

Around the world, the role of national regulation is often hotly debated. This book takes as its starting point the fact that legislatures and regulators are criticized for overregulation and for producing poor-quality regulation which ignores input from citizens and stifles private initiative. This situation has enhanced the role of non-state law, in forms such as self-regulation and soft law. In this book, international scholars in various fields of law, as well as socio-legal studies, address the question to what extent non-state law currently influences state regulation, and what the consequences of non-state law are likely to be for state regulation. Drawing lessons for the state legislature and state regulators, this innovative book will be of great interest to academic researchers and post graduate students in the fields of law, regulation, legal sociology, legal theory, law and economics, and environmental law. It will also be of interest to policy makers and regulators those working at ministries and government departments drafting legislation.

"With this valuable handbook the editors have successfully synthesized a field that has expanded considerably in recent years." —M.L. Stark, CHOICE Because the field of sociological inquiry is multi-faceted in perspective, and does subsume a variety of specialty interests, the literature in this discipline has developed and proliferated in a near exponential fashion. Sociology, today, has become so specialty driven in its research and theory agenda that the result is an enormous and complex body of sociological knowledge that is often considered to be unwieldy. 21st Century Sociology: A Reference Handbook provides a concise forum through which the vast array of knowledge accumulated, particularly during the past three decades, can be organized into a single definitive resource. The two volumes of this Reference Handbook focus on the corpus of knowledge garnered in traditional areas of sociological inquiry, as well as document the general orientation of the newer and currently emerging areas of sociological inquiry. Key Features Provides a timely and comprehensive assessment of the 100+ specialty fields of sociology with contributions by leading authorities in their area of expertise from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Singapore Examines four distinct phases of development in the history of sociological inquiry—a period of theoretical development, the emphasis on methodological development and refinement, the phase of specialization, and a period that has taken representatives of the discipline into previously unexplored areas Addresses the various traditional subfields of sociology, such as political sociology, educational sociology, rural sociology, criminology, occupational sociology, and minority relations Explores important new, evolving subfields, such as environmental sociology, sociology of sports and leisure, military sociology, medical sociology, the sociology of food and eating, and the sociology of emotions 21st Century Sociology presents the most comprehensive overview of modern sociology making it a must have resource for any academic library.

In the 11th edition of Law and Society, Steven E. Barkan preserves Dr. Vago’s voice while making this classic text more accessible for today’s students. Each chapter now includes an outline, learning objectives, key terms, and chapter summaries. A new epilogue chapter examines law and inequality in the United States as it moves into the third decade of this century. The 11th edition reflects new developments in law and society literature as well as recent real-life events with legal relevance for the United States and other nations. Law and Society is for one-semester undergraduate courses in Law and Society, Sociology of Law, Introduction to Law, and a variety of criminal justice courses offered in departments of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Political Science.

This book places context at the core of the Islamic mechanism of iftā’ to better understand the process of issuing fatwās in Muslim and non-Muslim countries, thus highlighting the connection between context and contemporaneity, on one hand, and the adaptable perception of Islamic law, on the other. The practice of iftā’ is one of the most important mechanisms of Islamic law that keeps Islamic thought about ethical and legal issues in harmony with the demands, exigencies and developments of time. This book builds upon the existing body of work related to the practice of iftā’, but takes the discussion beyond the current debates with the intent of unveiling the interaction between Islamic legal methodologies and different environmental contexts. The book specifically addresses the three institutions (Saudi Arabia’s Dār al-Iftā’, Turkey’s Diyanet and America’s FCNA) and their Islamic legal opinions (fatwās) in a comparative framework. This demonstrates the existence of complex and diverse ideas around similar issues within contemporary Islamic legal opinions that is further complicated by the influence of international, social, political, cultural and ideological contexts. The book thus unveils a more complicated range of interactive constituents in the process of the practice of iftā’ and its outputs, fatwās. The work will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Islamic law, Middle Eastern studies, religion and politics.