Bringing a timely synthesis to the field, The Handbook of Law and Society presents a comprehensive overview of key research findings, theoretical developments, and methodological controversies in the field of law and society.
Provides illuminating insights into societal issues that pose ongoing real-world legal problems
Offers accessible, succinct overviews with in-depth coverage of each topic, including its evolution, current state, and directions for future research
Addresses a wide range of emergent topics in law and society and revisits perennial questions about law in a global world including the widening gap between codified laws and “law in action”, problems in the implementation of legal decisions, law’s constitutive role in shaping society, the importance of law in everyday life, ways legal institutions both embrace and resist change, the impact of new media and technologies on law, intersections of law and identity, law’s relationship to social consensus and conflict, and many more
Features contributions from 38 international expert scholars working in diverse fields at the intersections of legal studies and social sciences
Unique in its contributions to this rapidly expanding and important new multi-disciplinary field of study
About the Author
Patricia Ewick is Professor of Sociology at Clark University. She is the co-author of The Common Place of Law (1998) and Social Science, Social Policy and Law (1999). She is also former co-editor of Studies in Law, Politics and Society and former Associate Editor of the Law & Society Review.
Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College and Hugo L. Black Visiting Senior Scholar at the University of Alabama School of Law. He is the author or editor of more than 90 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty (2014); When the State Kills: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture (2002); TheBlackwell Companion to Law and Society (Wiley Blackwell, 2004); and Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution (2007).
