Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Integrative Research Institute Law & Society (LSI)

Engaging with formal state legal orders is a significant aspect of various strands of socio-legal research. It informs, for instance, socio-legal research that contrasts implementation and enforcement practices of regulators and civil society actors ‘in action’ with the formal law ‘in the books’. An understanding of formal state legal orders also matters for socio-legal research that starts from ‘the social’ and generates explanatory accounts of social norms which may ultimately be in conflict with or further flesh out state legal norms.

Hence, a range of socio-legal studies are informed by specific understandings of what the content and meaning of state law is. Doctrinal analysis, including specific rules of statutory interpretation, is an important tool for justifying claims about what a specific legal provision means and what it does. But are there also other i.e. socio-legal ways of reading a judgement or legislation that include the political, economic and social context of the legal text?

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