About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

17 Ratio Juris 1 (2004)

handle is hein.journals/raju17 and id is 1 raw text is: Ratio Juris. Vol. 17 No. 1 March 2004 (1-14) Law in Culture ROGER COTTERRELL Abstract. The relationship of law and culture has long been a concern of legal anthro- pology and sociology of law. But it is recognised today as a central issue in many different kinds of juristic inquiries. All these recent invocations of the concept of culture indicate or imply problems at the boundaries of established thought about either the nature of law or the values that law is thought to express or reflect. The consequence is that legal theory must, it seems, now systematically take account of the notion of culture. The present paper asks how this might best be done. I argue that a concept of culture, as such, is of limited utility for legal theory because the term culture embraces a too indefinite and disparate range of phenomena. But legal theory needs conceptual resources to consider at a general level the relations of law and culture. This paper suggests that these resources should include, above all, a rigorous distinguishing of different abstract types of community. Legal theory requires a sociologically-informed concept of community. What is encompassed by the vague idea of culture is actually the content of different types of social relations of community and the networks (combinations) in which they exist. I. Intersections of Law and Culture In what ways have the relations of law and culture become more prominent in legal scholarship? This first section will sketch parameters of juristic concern in this area by outlining six important foci of legal inquiry in which culture is explicitly invoked and made central. Here the term is usually taken to indicate collective beliefs, values, traditions, attachments, or outlooks. These are assumed to exist in persistent but not necessarily unchanging combinations, characteristic of particular social populations. (1) Developments in comparative law indicate one such focus. Compara- tists have become increasingly obsessed by notions of 'legal culture' (Ogus 2002, 419). As comparative legal study gains in importance as a prac- tical matter in a world of globalisation and perceived cultural diversity, the nature of comparative law as an enterprise is discussed widely (e.g., Legrand and Munday 2003; Harding and Oriicii 2002; Nelken and Feest 2001; Riles 2001; Glenn 2000). The question of how far law is rooted in, and how far it can fly free of, culture becomes urgent. If comparative law © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden 02148, USA.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most