Constructing Virtual Justice in the Global Arena

Abstract

This book by Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth, both a major empirical and theoretical contribution, has arrived at a propitious time for law and society scholars. If our discipline is not in crisis, it is certainly in a period of transition. As “globalization” has monopolized the attention of policymakers, journalists, futurists, politicians, and the business elite, scholars in law and society have not been far behind. Meetings of the Law and Society Association have become notably more international in their objects, if to a lesser extent in membership and attendance. As our scholarship ventures with more regularity over, under, and beyond the boundaries of nation-states, we encounter new conceptual, methodological, and practical challenges, as well as the exacerbation of some more familiar difficulties. The work of Dezalay and Garth represents one of the most advanced and concerted efforts in our discipline to rise to this array of new (and old) challenges. The book's scope and ambitions are such that a reviewer is compelled to ask whether the authors have presented us with a new paradigm for research in sociology of law in the context of globalization. As I am only presumptuous enough to pose but not to answer that question, this review essay will document both the considerable promise and some possible limitations of the approach developed by Dezalay and Garth, in the hopes of using their work to spark a wider debate on the future of law and society scholarship in conditions of globalization.