Law and the Social Sciences PDF Download

Author: Patricia Ewick
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610441915
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Social science has been an important influence on legal thought since the legal realists of the1930s began to argue that laws should be socially workable as well as legally valid. With the expansion of legal rights in the 1960s, the law and social science were bound together by an optimistic belief that legal interventions, if fully informed by social science, could become an effective instrument of social improvement. Legal justice, it was hoped, could translate directly into social justice. Though this optimism has receded in both disciplines, social science and the law have remained intimately connected. Social Science, Social Policy, and the Law maps out this new relationship, applying social science to particular legal issues and reflecting upon the role of social science in legal thought. Several case studies illustrate the way that the law is embedded within the tangled interests and incentives that drive the social world. One study examines the entrepreneurialism that has shaped our systems of punishment from the colonial practice of deportation to today's privatized jails. Another case shows how many of those who do not qualify for legal aid cannot afford an effective legal defense with the consequence that economic inequality leads to inequality before the law. Two other studies look at the mixed results of legal regulation: the failure of legal safeguards to stop NASA's fatal 1986 Challenger launch decision, and the complicated effects of regulations to curb conflicts of interest in law firms. These two cases demonstrate that the law's effectiveness can depend, not only on how it is drafted, but also on how well it harmonizes with pre-existing social norms and patterns of self-regulation. The contributors to this volume share the belief that social science can and should influence legal policymaking. Empirical research is necessary to offset anecdotal evidence and untested assertions. But research that is acceptable to the academy may not stand up in court, and, as a result, social science does not always get a sympathetic hearing from legal decision makers. The relationship between social science and the law will always be complex; this volume takes a lead in showing how it can nonetheless be productive.

Author: Stanton Wheeler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781610448833
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Book Description
The notion of law as a social phenomenon would have surprised educators and scholars a century ago. For them, law was a science and the library was the ultimate source of all legal knowledge. Our contemporary willingness to see law in a social context--reflecting social relations, for example, or precipitating social changes--is a relatively recent development, spurred during the last quarter century by the work of a generation of scholars (mostly social scientists and law professors) who believe the perspectives of the social sciences are essential to a better understanding of the law. Law and the Social Sciences provides a unique and authoritative assessment of modern sociolegal research. Its impressive range and depth, the centrality of its concerns, and the stature of its contributors all attest to the vitality of the law-and-society movement and the importance of interdisciplinary work in this field. Each chapter is both an exposition of its author's point of view and a survey of the pertinent literature. In treating such topics as law and the economic order, legal systems of the world, the deterrence doctrine, and access to justice, the authors explore overlapping themes--the tension between public and private domains, between diffused and concentrated power, between the goals of uniformity and flexibility, between costs and benefits--that are significant to observers not only of our legal institutions but of other social systems as well.

Author: Julius Stone
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816603782
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
The author, a distinguished authority on law, provides an illuminating and challenging discussion of the social aspects of law and legal problems. As a background to some penetrating observations, he takes stock of the contributions and interrelations of.

Author: Adams, Maurice
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1802201467
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This cutting-edge book facilitates debate amongst scholars in law, humanities and social sciences, where comparative methodology is far less well anchored in most areas compared to other research methods. It posits that these are disciplines in which comparative research is not simply a bonus, but is of the essence.

Author: Huntington Cairns
Publisher: New York : A. M. Kelley
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description

Author: John Law
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113429431X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
John Law argues that methods don't just describe social realities but are also involved in creating them. The implications of this argument are highly significant. If this is the case, methods are always political, and it raises the question of what kinds of social realities we want to create. Most current methods look for clarity and precision. It is usually said that only poor research produces messy findings, and the idea that things in the world might be fluid, elusive, or multiple is unthinkable. Law's startling argument is that this is wrong and it is time for a new approach. Many realities, he says, are vague and ephemeral. If methods want to know and help to shape the world, then they need to reinvent themselves and their politics to deal with mess. That is the challenge. Nothing less will do.

Author: John Monahan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 634

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Book Description

Author: Jerome Michael
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367136178
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Originally published in 1933. This book came out of the seminal 'Michael‐Adler report' of a survey carried out to determine whether there was sufficient need for an institute of criminology and criminal justice in the United States and planning such institute. After responses from social scientists and criminal justice practitioners to the report, this book led to criminology's establishment as a discipline in its own right. This work presented the state of knowledge in the area at the time and the research methods being used and its place within scientific research. It focuses on the problems of identifying issues within criminal law and how to further investigation and research into them. The authors present their conclusions on the place of law within social sciences and also comment on psychology and sociology, where criminology at this time was based academically.

Author: Julius Stone
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Judicial process
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description

Author: Julius Stone
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452910669
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Law and the Social Sciences was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The author, a distinguished authority on law, provides an illuminating and challenging discussion of the social aspects of law and legal problems. As a background to some penetrating observations, he takes stock of the contributions and interrelations of the bodies of knowledge, from both the juristic and the social science side, which bear upon the study of law at the present time. He is concerned to show the respects in which jurisprudential ideas in this area have been stimulated and clarified by work in the social sciences, and, conversely, to draw attention to the need for the increased interest of social scientists in this area to take account of juristic insights, many of them of long standing. He points out some of the dangers, not limited to waste of effort, arising from "parochialism" on the part of either the lawyer or the social scientist. The final section is devoted to a study of the contributions, potentialities, and limits of behavioralist and computer techniques in understanding and operating the appellate judicial process. The book is based on a series of three lectures given by the author as the William S. Pattee Memorial Lectures sponsored by the University of Minnesota Law School.