In this book, legal scholar and research fellow in law, Dermot Feenan, corrals some of the leading scholars in the field of law and society, legal studies, as well as the focus of the book, sociolegal studies. In writing this review, I found myself initially wanting to simply write that sociolegal studies is a method scholars use to simplify their explanation of what they research. However, each scholar, beginning with Feenan, clearly introduces and explains that the “socio” plays a definitive role in sociolegal studies. The distinction, one in which the scholars in the book explore, examines the aspects of the social and society in the legal. That is, there is a two-way road regarding how law effects society and how society effects law.
As a legal scholar working in the social sciences, humanities, and the field of law, Feenan is the optimal editor to efficiently gather some of the field's leading scholars on sociolegal studies. Feenan helps explain precisely how and why the study of the socio is important. His claim is that the socio in sociolegal studies involves a “doubling of the social, both the subject and method of inquiry” (p. 33). Essentially, this means that the problems set by the theoretical frames are sufficiently addressed with this approach. Susan Silbey, a contributor to the book and professor of sociology and anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aptly asks, what do we do with this insight? I suggest that Feenan's array of scholars sufficiently answer that question.
The book is broken up into 13 chapters, each providing contextual inquiries into the socio of sociolegal studies. The first several parts, which include six chapters, provide introductions regarding how the notion of socio has been contested and the historical and theoretical inquiries associated with that/those questions. Legal scholars, including, Julia Shaw whose work on law, legal theory, and legal semiotics, posit that “language has an ordering function and the unique ability to categorize social subjects and, significantly, it is able to construct the individual by reference to a dominant ideology…” (p. 111). This leads one to see that law can form various truths that may help provide legitimacy to the power hierarchies in place. Of course, this also means that those legal hierarchies are able to maintain their structures of power for additional periods of time, even during times of social upheaval. Ultimately, this means that the notion of sociolegal studies needs to widen its audience, particularly by addressing the group of disenfranchised and downtrodden who need the benefits of the law.
The last two parts of the book and the last seven chapters provide variations on how the notion of socio is studied and how the idea of constitutive theory fits into this study. Since most sociolegal scholars study the notion of the constitutive—even if they do not realize it—it is particularly interesting that Feenan brought in three scholars to provide not only theoretical foundations on constitutive theory but also some contemporary and international examples of how there is place and practice in the constitution of the social. Hillary Sommerlad, professor of law, wisely notes that “the space for critical socio-legal work in the academy is constrained by the increasing commodification and privatization of knowledge; the marketization of education; and the impact of managerialist initiatives on academic freedom” (p. 197). Francisco Valdes, professor of law, provides a provocative approach on how studying the socio can bring society to law. He uses critical race theory, LatCrit legal theory, and other “nontraditional methods” (as he terms it) to outline how entrenched “imperial scholarship” has become normative and how those norms have been dominant (p. 272). Contemporary legal scholars appear to be increasingly aware of this paradigm shift and they are working in interrelated ways to help create a link between the personal and the theoretical to the social and the legal. The result is that notions of inequality, whether it is race, gender, or class—those that have been historically marginalized—may play a more central role in the construction of the socio through politics and the law.
For legal scholars who are interested in the general topic of sociolegal studies, this book provides some detailed and dense information that may help serve as an introduction. What Feenan and the other authors of the book do especially well is provide a balance between the theoretical foundation necessary to best understand the socio with numerous examples of how the socio is worthy of further study. The book is heavily weighted on legal and sociological theory which can be daunting for some not as well-versed in the field. For those interested in understanding the study of socio and sociolegal studies and beyond, this book is invaluable.
