1

Exploring the ‘Socio’ of

Socio-Legal Studies
Dermot Feenan

Introduction

Socio-legal studies is now sufficiently well established internationally as a

field of enquiry to warrant reflective examination of one of the key elements
of such study; the ‘socio’ of the ‘socio-legal’. The significance and reach of
socio-legal studies means that this examination is important not only to
those who identify as socio-legal scholars, but to an expanding number of
students, researchers and policymakers in law and in other fields informed
by those studies. This focus on the socio also reflects a widespread and
growing sense – not limited to socio-legal studies – that rapid changes in
late modernity, such as consumerism, globalization, or neoliberalism, pose
fresh challenges. Moreover, the profound social changes resulting from the
economic crisis in many advanced capitalist countries in the new millennium
provide added justification for this examination. This chapter introduces a
book which was conceived to address these issues. The book brings together a
variety of scholars, whose work has been selected because of their distinctive
contribution to an aspect of the socio – whether, for example, in cultural
studies, social policy, or legal studies.1 The distinctiveness of their contri-
butions carries with it another justification: that diverse, dynamic and
contested understandings of the social require continuous attention where
the legal is also in issue. But before introducing those contributions, this
chapter takes stock of the key features of the existing field. The chapter then
concludes with consideration of possible pathways for future developments
in the socio-legal field.

1 Nine of the chapters (by Clarke, Minkinnen, Munt, Nelken, Norrie, Silbey, Shaw, Sommerlad,
and Vel and Bedner) are based on papers presented at the SLSA one-day conference ‘Exploring
the “Socio” of Socio-Legal Studies’, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London, 3 November
2010, which was co-ordinated by the editor with the support of the Institute. Three chapters
(by Hunter, Valdes and Wheeler) were commissioned subsequently by the editor.

D. Feenan (ed.), Exploring the ‘Socio’ of Socio-Legal Studies

© The Editor(s) 2013
4 Exploring the ‘Socio’ of Socio-Legal Studies

Previous engagements with the socio

The term ‘sociolegal’ appears to have been in established use in the US since
the early part of the twentieth century.2 In the UK, a number of academic
lawyers and social scientists organized in 1972 as the Socio-Legal Group to
hold regular conferences. That group developed into the Socio-Legal Studies
Association (SLSA) in 1990. The Association conceives of socio-legal studies
as embracing ‘disciplines and subjects concerned with law as a social insti-
tution, with the social effects of law, legal processes, institutions and services
and with the influence of social, political and economic factors on the law
and legal institutions’.3 In 1972, the Social Science Research Council (the
predecessor of the Economic and Social Research Council) in a move to
provide institutional support for socio-legal studies funded the Centre for
Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford.
Notwithstanding the increasing extent of socio-legal research, teaching
and professional activity, there has been relatively little critical analysis of
what constitutes the socio of socio-legal studies (Fitzpatrick, 1995). True, a
number of scholars associated with the field engaged in various ways with
the issue (Cowan, 2004). A challenge to elaborating the socio, acknowledged
indirectly by some early proponents, such as Harris (1983), is that there is
no agreed definition of socio-legal studies. Some scholars have addressed the
socio directly, though in passing. A few scholars have addressed it obliquely,
by offering definitions of socio-legal studies generally (Campbell and Wiles,
1975; Cotterrell, 1995; Carline and Baker, 2008) or by exploring the various
meanings of socio-legal (Hutter and Lloyd-Bostock, 1997; Feeley, 2001). Here,
the socio is not analysed separately but is discernible through the definition
given to the broader conjoined field of the socio-legal. But these different
definitions connote different concepts of the socio and, consequently,
different relationships between the socio and the legal. Some treat the socio
as connoting the ‘social’ (Faulkner et al., 2012) or as contributing to an under-
standing of the social (McDermont et al., 2012). A number of studies define it
in terms of the study of law in its social context. Some other studies broaden
that context to include the ‘political and economic’ (Partington, 1995), or
add the ‘cultural’ (Hillyard and Sim, 1997). However, the precise relationship
between these fields is rarely elaborated. By far the largest number of scholars
address the socio impliedly, by positing the sociological deficit in socio-legal
studies (whereby the socio is framed by its asserted lack)(Campbell and Wiles,
1975; Banakar and Travers, 2005) or by addressing or encouraging engagement

2 In the US, the preferred locution for such studies is ‘sociolegal’, absent the hyphen, an expla-
nation for which has been offered by one adherent: Levine (1990), ‘Goose Bumps and “The
Search for Signs of Intelligent Life” in Sociolegal Studies: After Twenty-five Years’, n. 1. The
unhyphenated ‘sociolegal’ is sometimes used in the UK.
3 SLSA, Statement of Principles of Ethical Research Practice (2009), para. 1.2.1.