Interpretive Sociolegal Research

Bibliographic Data

ID12177352
AuthorsChristine B Harrington, Christine Harrington (0000-0001-8166-3188, University of Wisconsin–Madison, corresponding author), Barbara Yngvesson, Barbara Yngveson (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Year1990
Volume15
Issue01
Pages135-148
Publication date1990-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLaw & Social Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0897-6546 • E-ISSN: 1747-4469
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1747-4469.1990.tb00277.x
OpenAlexW2061112845
LanguageEN
Citations received35
References cited15

A major challenge for scholars seeking new directions in sociolegal research is the persistence of old paradigms and assumptions about law. The challenge for the new is not to be cast as part of the old by efforts that assimilate its methods, goals, and results to earlier approaches. Such efforts, aimed at comparison and clarification, tend to “domesticate” the new, or in Boa Santos's words “doubly institutionalize” a developing project by reading the order of a conventional analysis into the emergent order appearing in the interstices of new scholarly work. In this essay we focus on interpretivism as a developing project in sociolegal research. In particular, we discuss three aspects of interpretive research that are at the center of current debates in sociolegal theory: meaning construction and the dynamics of power, legal ideology, and knowledge as politics. Our discussion focuses on different readings of ideology, on different understandings of power, and on the politics of interpretive research connected with these readings. To illuminate the struggles over these points and at the same time illustrate the process of domestication, we begin with a recent paper by David Trubek and John Esser, “‘Critical Empiricism’ in American Legal Studies.” Their paper lays out a treatment of ideology and politics that provides a basis for our broader discussion of interpretive work in the second half of this essay

Epistemology · Ideology · Meaning (existential · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Reading (process · Social science · Sociology · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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