Socio-legal Researchers Research Articles

The Dynamics of International Legal Regime Formation: The Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong Revisited

The academic literature on the systems that govern relations between states is rich but not without gaps. The subject of international legal regime formation is one that may benefit from further exploration. The protracted and unnerving process leading to the signing of a path-breaking agreement between China and the United Kingdom regarding the future of Hong Kong, a topic which has fascinated historians but has not galvanized socio-legal researchers into action on a meaningful scale, may offer considerable insights pertaining to the development of governance systems that regulate complex interaction between states.

The Crazy-Quilt of Collateral Consequences: Innovations and Challenges in Data Collection, Coding, and Accessibility

The project described herein may be of interest to socio-legal scholars and researchers for at least three reasons: it responds to a critical justice policy need that has previously received limited attention (a Supreme Court decision issued during the project’s first year has changed that), it presents evolving methodological challenges in data collection and coding, and it seeks to deliver a final product relevant and accessible to distinct groups of varying sophistication: policymakers, prosecutors, and pro se defendants, among others. The following paper describes a work very much in progress. The penultimate product - a comprehensive database of collateral consequences to support informed decision-making by judges, attorneys, policymakers and individuals - addresses many unmet needs. For individuals facing criminal charges and their attorneys, this resource will contain information necessary to understand the full effects of a trial or plea outcome. For judges and prosecutors considering appropriate sanctions, this resource will hold information on the civil penalties attached to a conviction by trial or plea. For justice policymakers at state and federal levels, this resource will be the first exhaustive compilation of collateral consequences across these jurisdictions. In light of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Padilla v Kentucky, 130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010), defense counsel are required to advise clients whether a plea carries a risk of deportation - and such a risk often manifests as a collateral, not direct, consequence of conviction. The collection and organization of the relevant data has proven a rich experience for the research team, requiring innovative methods and re-consideration of important design issues. The ultimate product - a publicly available website through which any of the above groups can search the database or sort the data within - represents an effort to bring the compiled data to life most effectively. The design of an accessible, functional legal resource is no mean feat, especially in light of the one-to-many relationships within the data: a single consequence may be triggered by multiple offenses, and single offense may trigger multiple consequences. Further, a single statute or rule may detail multiple consequences. Website visitors are anticipated to bring a range of interests, including the ability to search by charge/offense (“What consequences are triggered by a conviction on this charge?”), by consequence (“Which offenses might limit my ability to practice in my profession?”), by class of consequences (“Which offenses will curtail my civic participation?”), by duration of consequence (“For how long is this consequence in effect?”), or by processes for relieving consequences (“How can this consequence be lifted?”). This paper (like the project, very much in progress as of this date) will present the initial methodology as well as refinements undertaken over the course of the project. Issues as fundamental as the unit of analysis and the accessibility/functionality of the final program have required attention, and socio-legal researchers may gain important insights about data collection and coding, as well as public accessibility of results, through this review. I seek to share and discuss methodological issues as disparate as data coding and the policy environment, as well as challenges in creating a legal-information resource accessible and responsive to an array of user groups.

Power, culture and method in comparative law

This review essay draws on a recently edited handbook by Esin Örücü and David Nelken to reflect on the methodological concerns and challenges of comparative law and sociolegal research. It argues that the contextualisation of laws should be regarded as the indispensable methodological characteristic of all comparative studies of law that aspire to transcend the understanding of law as a body of rules and doctrine. It further argues that although the cultural perspective facilitates contextualisation of the law, a cultural understanding is neither a precondition for undertaking comparative legal research nor necessarily the correct approach under all circumstances; for certain aspects of law and legal behaviour need not be conceptualised in cultural terms. The essay concludes by proposing that the combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches could provide a meta-methodological framework within which specific comparative techniques can be employed. Such a framework will enable comparatists and sociolegal researchers to account for how law interacts with, and simultaneously manifests itself at, the macro-, micro- and the intermediary meso-levels of society over time.

Studying Law by Association: Bruno Latour Goes to the Conseil d’État

This essay provides an overview of actor-network theory (ANT) and its potential interest for sociolegal scholars. It focuses on Bruno Latour's 2002 ethnography of La fabrique du droit: une ethnographie du Conseil d’État [The factory of law: an ethnography of the Conseil d’État] (2002b), which provides an analysis of the workings of the French Conseil d’État. The essay seeks to introduce non-French-reading sociolegal researchers to this work and draws out methodological and theoretical implications for research on legal institutions, legal knowledge, and bureaucracies.

Examining the ‘CSI effect’ through an ANT lens

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is part of a new generation of police drama where science and technology play a central role in catching criminals. Though very few would mistake it for educational programming, the show appears to be infl uencing how its audience comes to think about forensics. Dubbed the ‘CSI effect’, the show is said to be giving viewers the impression that the use of forensics in criminal investigations is not only common, but is quick, easy, and without budgetary constraints. Whether it is the rising number of ‘science-savvy’ jurors or the growing workload for crime labs, the current fl urry of media coverage appears focused on the effects that CSI is having in various areas of criminal justice. Because of the supposed impact on the judicial system, a common reaction among legal commentators is to try to separate fact from fi ction by pointing out examples where these portrayals of forensics are somehow inaccurate, grossly oversimplifi ed or highly implausible. However, for socio-legal researchers interested in studying the representations of forensics in popular culture, it may be unwise to become overly preoccupied with highlighting what is not ‘real’ on CSI and dismissing these depictions as ‘make believe’. Rather than bracketing fact from fi ction, we need to embrace ‘complexity’ (see Law and Mol, 2002) and concentrate on the interaction between what is presented on TV and what we often describe as the ‘real world’ of forensics and criminal justice. In order to do this, it may be useful to draw on the theoretical and methodological insights from the fi eld of Science and Technology Studies (S&TS) and the specifi c branch of research known as Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Like other branches of S&TS, ANT theorists look at how social and human elements are implicated in the production of scientifi c facts and technological artefacts. ANT considers the ways in which ideas and things are produced through a ‘network’ of heterogeneous ‘actors’. This focus on the processes of ‘translation’ allows ANT theorists to consider the existence of hybrids and, as such, avoids what Latour (1993) describes as the modern project of ‘purifi cation’ with the ontological divisions that are created between ‘nature and society’ or ‘human and non-human’. This Research Note adopts a similar approach to the study of forensic science and technology in order to illustrate the ‘messiness’ of hybridity and the many connections between the TV depictions of forensics and their ‘real world’ counterparts. Using ANT to

The socio-legal context of privacy

Privacy rights are growing apace, as can be seen from a continuing stream of judgments from UK and European courts, the rise of special interest privacy groups and other institutions tasked to protect privacy. Privacy has – its proponents suggest – at last arrived as a fully fledged legal right. However, despite these advancements, I suggest that privacy is becoming less prevalent in society; primarily because of technological and cultural changes, but also because the technical legal implementation of privacy is highly problematic. In this article it is argued that this seeming paradox should be more critically examined by socio-legal researchers who, to date, have done little to test the assertions and assumptions of the privacy lobby. This article maintains that there is a need for more investigation of the basis and assumptions behind data protection and privacy law and that a more robust analysis of the claims and rhetoric for these rights will change our attitudes towards privacy developments. The sociological conception that ‘underlying all social interaction there seems to be a fundamental dialectic’ will be used to undermine the legal notion of privacy as an individualistic ‘fundamental right’.

Regulatory law: some lessons from the past

Regulation as a legal form of social engineering has been subjected to much analysis in the last decade or so. The importance of the topic to contemporary law cannot be overstated: on the one hand, it has been the avowed aim of government to ‘deregulate’ industry; on the other hand, and paradoxically, both the concomitant policy of privatisation and the evolution towards a Single European Market have increased the need for regulation in appropriate areas. The efforts to explore the strengths and weaknesses of different regulatory forms have brought together scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Administrative lawyers have been concerned with how the power of decision-making is allocated between institutions and the general problems of accountability and control of discretion to which this gives rise. Socio-legal researchers have critically examined the practices of regulatory agencies as regards rule formulation and enforcement.