Law School “Law” and Sociolegal Research

Abstract

Whether and how to carry out interdisciplinary inquiries between law and the social sciences is a problem that has bedeviled the legal academic community for some years. Perhaps it also bedevils the social science community. One senses that the law people gaze at social scientists in envious anticipation that they may have some insights (causal theories and explanations) that will make more manageable the law's burdens of social stabilization and implementation of social goals. The social scientists meanwhile gaze at the law in contemplation of its plenitude of underexamined phenomena that might be illuminated by the light that social science has generated, or would like to generate. There is also the point that law and social science have a common subject matter and that law people and social scientists find themselves interested in many of the same problems. Hence the mutual attractions.