Dear readers,
Please find below a statement, sent to us by Jacques Commaille, the current editor-in-chief of Droit et Société, on behalf of his journal's editorial board and on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his journal. We are pleased to grant Professor Commaille's request to print this note. Together with Droit et Société, the Law & Society Review is part of the larger ecology of law and society scholarship and of the journals that carry it. No doubt, within that environment, different projects occupy distinct niches, partly marked by national or language affiliations. Yet, despite such specialization, they do share a world, rich with overlapping intellectual and academic agendas. A careful reading of Professor Commaille's statement and our editorial introductions to the current and the past volumes of the Law & Society Review – and of the journals of course – reveals both specializations and commonalities. Cultivating exchanges and mutual awareness can only strengthen both, the niches and the world we share. We wish Droit et Société a happy anniversary and many happy returns!
Timothy R. Johnson and Joachim J. Savelsberg
Co-editors, Law & Society Review
The significance of an academic journal
Droit et Société is celebrating its 30th anniversary. This is an excellent occasion to address the issue that justify the journal's existence: you, our readers and contributors. This is a wonderful opportunity, too, to enter into a dialogue with other international academic journals evolving in the same branches of knowledge and pursuing the same goals.
This anniversary is less about celebrating the specific virtues of one journal, than it is about sharing with other publications the basis for accomplishing its mission of promoting knowledge-creating endeavors, from the perspective of its identity, of the spirit in which its mission is accomplished, of its founding principles.
Droit et Société arose from an encounter between legal theory and sociology of law. Pursuit of the meaning of law, and its implementation, has progressively become inseparable from a quest for knowledge via the social sciences on what the law, through that which it says and that which it does, reveals, with particular force, of the societal transformations.
The intellectual adventure that a journal represents can only succeed if it is also a human adventure. Evident since the initial conceptualization, multidisciplinarity is a crucial element of this project that requires attentiveness, tolerance, and, above all, strict adherence to the principle of “otherness,” beyond the plurality of specializations and competencies, disciplinary allegiances, and schools of thought.
A journal is more than the combination of competencies. It can be a community that aspires to the utopia of a “republic of scholars” with the power of transcending affectations of all sorts – intellectual, ideological, political, and administrative – to become a space for exchanging and challenging ideas, a site for debate, where, in this case, the sole imperative is the permanent quest to understand the law, which is, itself, a reflection of societies’ functioning and of their transformation despite the threats, indignities, but also promises, that they harbor. A journal can be a disinterested venue in the sense that its purpose is the production of knowledge conceived not as implicitly addressing the sole scholarly world, but, instead, as a requirement in the face of uncertainties of current and future social and political worlds.
The journal Droit et Société wishes to share all of this on its 30th anniversary. The greatest reward that the journal can receive on this occasion is the assurance that a number of journals from around the world, harking from the same field of knowledge, declare themselves eager stakeholders of this endeavor.
The Editorial Board of Droit et Société
