Socio-Legal Studies

The Socio-Legal Studies Working Group will explore points of contact between different disciplines and law.  Academic and popular attention has steadily been growing as to the question of the role of law in society, particularly in the context of new and emerging areas of legal inquiry.  While legal professionals have long studied aspects of the history, politics, and social effects of the law, sociologists, political scientists, historians, anthropologists, criminologists, and philosophers have begun analyzing law not simply as an internally rational system, but in its reciprocal and mutually constitutive relations with society. This has led to new questions being asked about law, questions of broad academic interest, such as legal pluralism and the conflicts between secular and religious law in plural societies, and the evolution of human rights law and practice in the context of globalization and the "War on Terror."  In our meetings, we will discuss relevant texts drawn from different disciplines and focus on topics such as claims to authority in discourses of human rights, problems affecting socio-legal studies as an emerging interdisciplinary field, and locating legal rationalities within a historical context.  Meetings are open to faculty and graduate students.

Eric Reiter (History), Organizer

Members:

Eric Reiter Assistant Professor, History, Organizer

Ceren Belge Assistant Professor, Political Science

Amy Swiffen Assistant Professor, Sociology and Anthropology