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Socio-Legal Trajectories Across Europe: Comparative Perspectives | Christian Boulanger, Naomi Creutzfeldt and Jennifer Hendry (Eds.)

Christian Boulanger, Naomi Creutzfeldt and Jennifer Hendry (Eds.), Socio-Legal Trajectories Across Europe: Comparative Perspectives, Oxford: Hart Publishing; Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025, coll. “Oñati International Series on Law and Society”, 216 p.

Compte rendu par Stewart Field (Cardiff School of Law and Politics)

 

‘Sociolegal’ is a term and a category associated  with anglophone contexts. In much of Continental Europe, sociology of law is the more familiar and traditional classification. One narrow reading associates the ‘sociolegal’ with empirical studies (usually conducted with a policy objective). A more common, broader reading sees it as encompassing any interdisciplinary approaches to law that have a social dimension. On the former narrow reading, sociology of law is sometimes distinguished in anglophone circles as a more theoretical approach to examining law and legal institutions. But on the latter, more expansive reading, sociology of law is seen as part of the broad umbrella of sociolegal studies. But there are no agreed definitions even within the anglophone world, let alone beyond. This book looks to examine the ‘sociolegal’ as it is conceived and as it is developing across a range of different European legal cultures.

 The editors invited contributors to connect two distinct ‘socio-legal trajectories’. The first was the scholars’ own individual ‘micro-trajectory’, how their careers developed in a sociolegal direction, the research questions they were posing and the methods and theories they were applying. The second was the macro-trajectory of sociolegal studies as it had developed in the contexts (legal and academic) of their own jurisdiction or region. The focus is on Northern and Eastern Europe with chapters covering Poland, Hungary, the Western Balkans, Scandinavia, France and the United Kingdom. But there are also accounts from the Spanish-speaking world and from Israel (seen as still heavily influenced by European legal cultures). The editors see the juxtaposition of societal histories of sociolegal studies and individual scholarly self-reflection and biographical narrative as the original contribution of the book. But they recognise that it posed a significant challenge for the contributors. In a frank moment in the Preface, the editors describe the ‘brief’ that they have given their contributors as a ‘dastardly’ combination of ‘auto-ethnographic self-reflection, sociolegal history and academic legal cultural positionality.’ The editors therefore decided to allow the contributors great freedom to establish their own focus and methodologies.  

The outcome is what the editors describe as a ‘rich variety of approaches’: contributors interpreted their remit in very different kinds of ways. Some evidently felt more comfortable with telling the ‘macro’ story (of the jurisdiction or region within which they study and work) with only limited asides and addenda on their own ‘micro’ story (Bucholc on Poland, Fekete on Hungary, Forić on the Western Balkans, Wheeler on the UK). Others made the story of themselves as ‘individual scholars’ the focus of their chapters with only limited discussion of broader local legal cultures (Hammersley on Scandinavia, Madar on Israel). The rest give significant space to both (Kocher on Germany, Pou Giménez on Spain). The call for ‘self-reflection’ mainly yielded career autobiographies: the story of where contributors studied, how their academic networks developed, who helped and influenced them, where they got their academic posts, the presence or absence of sociolegal perspectives around them in this personal journey. One or two reflect on the more personal ‘why’ questions within the remit (why these research questions, methodologies and theories). But most of the self-reflection is about ‘how I got here.’ This is perhaps understandable: it provided a personal illustration of the broader local history of sociolegal studies that comprised the ‘macro’ element of the brief. 

What is revealed by these varied interpretations of a complex remit? First, that in terms of the macro-stories of the development of ‘sociolegal’ studies across Europe, the United Kingdom (UK) is a clear outlier. There, sociolegal approaches have developed to the point whereby they have occupied and perhaps become the mainstream of legal academia. Elsewhere, sociolegal strands to legal study and research are developing but remain very much a minority practice in the face of the continuing dominance of the doctrinal tradition. In some jurisdictions (Western Balkans, Poland, Hungary), the recent emergence of the sociolegal builds on a long established, albeit minority, practice within Law Schools to complement the doctrinal with courses on legal theory. Here the sociology of law has been long established feature of the curriculum, in some places alongside philosophy of law (Poland), in others, legal anthropology and ethnography (Hungary). But this minority tradition does not seem to have existed everywhere on the Continent: in Spain, France and Germany there has been little or no traditional place in Law Faculties for either sociology of law or sociolegal studies.

Most chapters trace the recent emergence of sociolegal studies in Continental Europe. They identify both transnational trends that have had a general influence and political events that have operated as triggering points in particular places. In Germany, Kocher identifies the student movement and the unions as driving the emergence of sociolegal approaches in the 1960s (at least in the context of labour law). In Israel, the rise of the sociolegal in the late 80s is associated with the development of Israeli critical theory questioning central Israeli myths. For the countries of the former Soviet bloc, one might have expected its collapse to have been transformative. But in Poland, the transition to a market economy post 1989 further entrenched the doctrinal tradition as an approach to law thought suitable to training for burgeoning private law practices. Rather, there it was the rise of the nationalist right after 2015 that prompted a recognition both of the central social significance of law (particularly constitutional law and human rights) and that purely doctrinal readings could not be sufficient as a means of its interpretation. Curiously, and perhaps disappointingly, the chapter on Hungary alludes in passing to similar developments there but does not discuss their impact at all. Its author rather coyly suggests that this is explained by his socialisation into a scholarly tradition that is not ‘explicit on… political preferences’. Many sociolegal scholars would find that a difficult position to defend.

What the collapse of the Soviet Bloc does seem to have permitted is the participation of countries of the former bloc in some key recent transnational trends that have shaped legal scholarship on the Continent more generally. Internationalisation of academic networks and more generally greater interaction between Central and Western European scholars and the anglophone academic world has widened the range and influence of readily accessible sociolegal scholarship. For Northern Europe, this has largely meant contact with Law and Society scholarship from United States as well as sociolegal studies from the UK. But there has also been increasing contact between sociolegal scholars in the Spanish speaking world. Shifts in the demands of building an academic career also emerge as factors across several chapters. The increasing stress on grant capture from national and international bodies such as the European Research Council as a performance indicator gives added value to the empirical work that has long been a strand of the sociolegal. 

Given that sociolegal approaches generally remain minority practice, it is not surprising that many scholars evoke the significance of certain atypical institutions that have encouraged interdisciplinarity. The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, and the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies are the most obvious examples cited:  places where small groups of like-minded scholars have been able to come together to work against the grain of the dominant trends. But for other contributors, the Department of Sociology of Law at University of Lund or the Latin American Seminar on Constitutional Law and Theory have played a similar role. Elsewhere particular journals or associations have provided a place for a small knowable community of scholars to nurture and support alternatives to the doctrinal.

This brings us to the micro-trajectories of individual scholars. For the most part, the analysis consisted of professional autobiographies detailing not just studies, appointments and projects but also institutional and academic influences. Most contributors emphasize the atypicality of their professional journey when compared with mainstream lawyers or even sociologists. This provides some rich illustrations of the marginality of the sociolegal portrayed by the general histories. All these chapters focus, with lesser or greater detail, on stories of the formation of professional identities. But two chapters step further into a space where the relations between professional and personal identities and the ‘sociolegal’ are more explicitly considered (responding to the editors’ call for ‘autoethnographic self-reflection’). Both accounts manifest significant degrees of personal reticence in adopting the sociolegal as a categorisation of their work. Kocher’s feminism and involvement with trade union institutions leads her initially to assume the more radical identity of critical legal studies and to eschew self-definition in terms of labels like ‘sociolegal’ or sociology of law. Only with 20 years’ experience and positions of institutional leadership does she begin to see the advantages of defining herself as working within an expansive definition of the sociolegal as ‘interdisciplinary legal studies’ which embraces theoretical critique and a range of disciplines. But it is Madar that goes furthest in examining the intersection between personal and professional identities with a story of her own uncertainties around assuming the identity of the sociolegal. She was brought up in an Israeli working-class family where law was perceived more as threat than remedy and therefore not to be trusted. This background, along with her strongly felt position of support for Palestinians deprived of land, freedom of movement and lives by the law in Israel, led her to a personal rejection of law’s authority as a ‘solution’. She was only able to reconcile herself to a ‘sociolegal’ identity by seeing it as a practice that ‘sullies’ the law with historical contexts and political interpretations of the judicial process and refuses law’s authority and claims to objectivity. Of course, this is a particular interpretation of the sociolegal that sits uneasily with the association sometimes seen of sociolegal research as primarily empirical work aimed at policy adjustments perfecting the operation of state law. The complex and contested connotations of the term are clearly revealed here.

The sub-title of the book is ‘comparative perspectives’. Yet there is relatively little explicit systematic comparison in the book. In part that is a consequence of its conception: each author is asked to describe the evolution of the sociolegal within their own jurisdiction or region and to connect this by self-reflection to their own personal experiences. So comparison is limited to individual authors’ experience of differing European legal cultures. If the search is for systematic comparative interpretation, this approach puts a great deal of weight either on synthesizing introductions and/or conclusions by the editor(s) or on the readers themselves in comparing the experiences outlined in individual chapters. More systematic ‘comparative perspectives’ might have involved extended comparison of the factors promoting and inhibiting the development of the sociolegal in different jurisdictions across Europe. There is a little of that kind of discussion in the introduction but no synthesizing conclusion. That is perhaps understandable. Because the editors’ strategy was to leave freedom to contributors to establish the relative priority accorded to the macro and the micro and to define their task, the contents of chapters (and therefore the information provided on different jurisdictions) are not systematically comparable. Even the concepts underpinning the national accounts are not necessarily understood in similar ways. For example, most authors do not define what they mean by sociolegal, others offer differing interpretations. There are some rich comparative fragments and hints here but as the editors themselves comment, in relation to the history and contemporary circumstances of sociolegal studies ‘we are at the very beginning of such systematic comparison.’

Perhaps the most striking comparative question is why and how the UK has become an outlier in Europe with sociolegal studies now an established part of the mainstream. Wheeler identifies a range of factors promoting this shift but most of them are influences referenced in other jurisdictions. Perhaps the most culturally distinctive factor cited in the UK is that a market-based funding system based increasingly on fees paid by students rather than state funding has promoted rapid expansion of legal education. Wheeler links this to the reframing of the law degree as broad and liberal rather than purely vocational (which thus easily encompasses sociolegal approaches) (181). But why that reframing at that time? Wheeler implies that it was demand by students. Yet British law students, at least when they choose their degree, are still very vocationally oriented towards private legal practice. An alternative hypothesis that I would like to see comparatively explored, based on my understanding of France and the UK,[1] is that the decisive influence in constraining sociolegal approaches in one country and facilitating them in another is the extent to which the central state has and uses levers to maintain the doctrinal orthodoxy in legal education. This book does not examine systematically such specific comparative hypotheses. But it is full of rich fragments of the diverse personal and social histories of the ‘sociolegal’ in Europe that will fascinate many readers of Droit et Société.

 

[1] Renaud Colson and Stewart Field, “Socio-legal studies in France: beyond the Law Faculty”, J. Law and Society, 43(2), 2016, p. 285-311

Nathalie Barnault
Nathalie Barnault

OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
ds (30 mars 2026). Socio-Legal Trajectories Across Europe: Comparative Perspectives | Christian Boulanger, Naomi Creutzfeldt and Jennifer Hendry (Eds.). Droit & Société. Consulté le 20 mai 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15z1g


1 réponse

  1. Thank you very much for this thoughtful review! You are right that we do not offer any direct comparative analyses that could yield causal hypotheses. Given the importance we attach to context (historical, political, etc.), we believe such hypotheses can only be generated through case-by-case comparisons, with any resulting hypotheses only covering the cases from which they were generated. For example, in a related paper (see below), we emphasise the importance of research evaluation in explaining the differences between the UK and Germany. For the edited volume, however, we were more interested in a heuristic framework to guide the collection of empirical and historical data when comparing different academic trajectories. We will explore the UK–Germany comparison in more depth in our final project publication. In any case, we will be happy to address some of the concerns you raise there.

    https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-042224-070656

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