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Past, Present and Future of Socio-legal Epistemic Pluralism

Is interdisciplinary legal research in crisis because of its lack of theoretical unity? Or is its diversity its greatest strength? This post looks beyond the boundaries of our own discipline and argues that we need to understand our own history better in order to conduct better research in the future.[1]

When you look at the lively program of the socio-legal conferences in recent years,[2] hear the engaged discussions, and consider the sheer variety of approaches, a question arises: Is the talk of the problematic state of the sociology of law or socio-legal studies, voiced by various authors for a couple of years now, still appropriate?

Let’s take three examples. Just over 20 years ago, the diagnosis of an identity crisis in our field was a common theme. Reza Banakar, who passed away far too early in 2020, described the sociology of law in 1998 as a field consisting of a “myriad of ‘sectarian’ alternative approaches” lacking a basic consensus on theoretical and methodological paradigms (Banakar 1998, 3). The result, he argued, was a fragmented production of knowledge that appeared theoretically underdeveloped to sociologists and practically irrelevant to lawyers.

Around the same time, Brian Tamanaha (1997) also had some issues with the field. He diagnosed a political one-sidedness (a “left to far-left” bias) and an anti-foundationalist stance that had driven the field into a political bubble and scientific irrelevance. His call for a “realistic socio-legal studies” was an attempt to find a way out.

Most recently, Alfons Bora (2023, 2024) voiced his dissatisfaction with the state of German sociology of law. He observed a “de-disciplining” of the subject in favor of hybrid fields and steady de-institutionalization. The sociology of law appears here as the “stepchild” of sociology, paid little attention by the mother discipline. Bora’s solution is a “reflexive sociology of law” based on Luhmann’s systems theory, aiming to build bridges to both jurisprudence and general sociology.

These diagnoses are serious, and cannot simply be dismissed. The multitude of often incommensurable approaches in the field is obvious, and so is the politically normative motivation of a considerable portion of research, which often express the dissatisfaction with the status quo (economic inequality, discrimination etc). It is also apparent that there is very little demand from both the lawyers’ and the sociologists’ side, which both seem to be perfectly happy and functioning without socio-legal knowledge.

I suggest a different perspective.  Banakar, Tamanaha, and Bora describe aspects of a phenomenon that poses significant challenges to both the internal discourse and the external presentation of socio-legal research. It is a reality we have to deal with: a situation of “socio-legal epistemic pluralism.” Unlike the natural sciences, which rely on unifying scientific paradigms, the social sciences are inherently “multi-paradigmatic.” The question is not how to abolish this pluralism, which would be a futile endeavour. Rather, we should ask how we can use this pluralism productively, without falling into the traps of sterile meta-theorizing, or antagonistic competition over a theoretical monopoly.

To do this, however, we first need to understand how we got here. And here lies a major problem with our discipline: We know surprisingly little about our own history.

A Field Without a Memory?

When Banakar, Tamanaha, and Bora speak about the state of the field, they are actually talking about very different things. Banakar looked from a Scandinavian perspective, Tamanaha from the USA, and Bora from Germany. The development of thinking about law and society has proceeded very differently in these regions.

Nevertheless, there are hardly any comparative studies on the history of the sociology of law or socio-legal studies. The last major attempt at a global survey was made by Vincenzo Ferrari back in the 1980s. While general sociology has embraced a trend of “self-historicization,” examining its own development with sociological methods, the sociology of law has largely lagged behind here.

Why is this a problem? Because without this knowledge, we do not understand why certain ideas are taken for granted (“doxa”) in our context while others are marginalized. We do not understand the conditions under which our field flourishes or stagnates. This is more than academic navel-gazing. It is crucial for three aspects of our daily work:

  1. Understanding: To make the results of our research mutually intelligible, we need to know where we come from. A German legal sociologist rooted in systems theory and a British socio-legal scholar conducting ethnography often talk past each other because they are unaware of the different historical contexts of their disciplines.
  2. Counteracting Hegemony: The global language of science is English. This is practical, but it has a catch: The English-language discourse (primarily US and UK) is often mistaken for a global body of knowledge. Yet, it is itself “local” in origin. If we do not write our own history, we leave the field to dominant discourses and risk that important perspectives from other regions (like Latin America, Asia, or Eastern Europe) are ignored.
  3. Institutional Strength: Anyone who wants to improve the status of our field must understand why it has been successfully institutionalized in some countries (like the UK) and is perceived more as a marginal phenomenon in others (like Germany). The answer often lies not in the quality of ideas, but in material factors: money, power, university structures, and politics.

What the Data Says: Pluralism as a Fact

To avoid relying solely on anecdotes, let us look at some data. In a project with Naomi Creutzfeldt and Jen Hendry, we have conducted empirical surveys among legal sociologists in Germany and the UK, as well as a bibliometric analysis of the Journal of Law and Society.

The results confirm the pluralism that critics lament, but also show its facets:

  • Theoretical Diversity: There is no unified paradigm. We find systems theory, Bourdieusian theory, neo-Marxism, Empirical Legal Studies, and New Legal Realism existing side by side. A cluster analysis of citations shows that after a brief dominance of Marxist theory in the 1970s, French theory (Foucault, Bourdieu), systems theory, and many other approaches now coexist peacefully.
  • Political Motivation: Tamanaha’s accusation of political one-sidedness can be supported empirically, but perhaps more nuanced than he assumed. In our survey, almost 80% of respondents fully agreed that they wanted to “contribute to a more just society” through their work. A topic analysis of the Journal of Law and Society also shows a strong focus on issues such as social inequality, human rights, gender justice, or the environment. The field is thus strongly normatively oriented, but whether this leads to “irrelevance” is another question. In the UK, for example, the field has experienced successful institutionalization despite this orientation.
  • The “Stepchild” Problem: The relationship to the mother discipline of sociology is tense. Sociology cannot ignore law as a social phenomenon, but it often views legal sociology as an exotic peripheral area. Conversely, jurisprudence is a practice-oriented discipline that, as Banakar dryly noted, can function perfectly well without sociological input. There is no “natural demand” from the legal side for sociology. This makes institutional anchoring difficult.

Ways Out of the Crisis: Self-Reflection and Middle-Range Theory

How do we deal with this pluralism? We should not try to replace it with a grand paradigm. For example, systems theory or law & economics are both very successful paradigms, which succeed in reducing complexity by accepting certain empirical blind spots. Instead, we need tools to navigate this diversity.

1. Biographical and Disciplinary Reflexivity
Reflexivity should not just be an abstract property of a theory (as Bora sets it out for systems theory), but part of the research process. Every theoretical choice is a decision that could have been made differently. Transparency about this is scientific integrity. Sociologist George Steinmetz (2021:21) suggests that researchers question their own “spontaneous or common sense categories.” This means becoming aware of the history of the social worlds in which we operate. Where was I trained? Which intellectual traditions shape me? It is not about autobiographical confessions, but about analyzing the conditions under which we produce knowledge. In a recent edited volume, we asked scholars from all over Europe to do exactly this: to examine their own careers and work against the background of their local legal sociological environment. The result was a fascinating insight into the different “biographies” of our discipline.

2. Middle-Range Theories as a Bridge
Instead of getting lost in the battles of “grand theory,” we should resort more often to “theories of the middle range”, as proposed by Robert K. Merton (1957). These are theories that lie between small working hypotheses and the all-encompassing grand system. A classic example from the Law and Society literature is Marc Galanter’s (1974) distinction between “One-Shotters” and “Repeat Players” in court. Such concepts are often metaphorical and “colorful,” but they are extremely useful for explaining social mechanisms without dissolving into the abstraction of a grand theory. They act as a bridge: they are understandable enough to communicate with lawyers or policymakers, yet can still be reconstructed (nor not!) within paradigmatic theories (be it praxeological, systems, or rational choice theory).

3. Self-Confident Interdisciplinarity
Finally, we must stop seeing socio-legal studies merely as an “antithesis” to legal dogmatics. The separation between “law on the books” and “law in action” is actually a misleading metaphor. Doctrinal research is not just law on the books, it is part of the living law itself, and thus an important object for empirical inquiry.

Most importantly, we must emphasize that “legal science” (if there is such a thing) is more than just doctrinal research. As early as the 1920s, Herman Kantorowicz argued that the sociology of law should be an integral part of legal science, alongside dogmatics and legal philosophy. We should not view legal sociology as outsiders knocking on the door of jurisprudence, but as part of an expanded legal science that accepts different ways of knowing. Epistemic pluralism is the norm here, not the exception.

Conclusion: The Strength of Diversity

The diagnoses by Banakar, Tamanaha, and Bora are important because they force us to reflect on ourselves. I have proposed that “Socio-legal epistemic pluralism” is not a weakness to be cured. It is a reality that we must manage—and that we can turn into a strength. It flows from the fact that the field is organized around a social phenomenon, not a theoretical paradigm.

In order to accomplish this, we must research and understand our own history better. We must understand why we research the way we do and identify the blind spots of our local traditions. We must be more reflective when making theoretical choices. To reach a larger audience and communicate across theoretical divides, middle-range theories might be the best approach.

And we have reasons to be self-confident. Interdisciplinary legal research offers a toolkit that is as rich as hardly any other. If we learn to use this toolkit consciously and reflexively, instead of searching for the one universal key, the vice of theoretical pluralism can be turned into the virtue of diversity.


Literatur

  • Banakar, Reza. 1998. “The Identity Cricis of a ‘Stepchild.’” Retfærd: Nordisk Juridisk Tidsskrift 21 (3): 3–21. https://lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/4543334/4537547.pdf.
  • Bora, Alfons. 2023. Responsive Rechtssoziologie – Theoriegeschichte in systematischer Absicht: Soziologische Theorie des Rechts 1. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-41141-1.
  • Bora, Alfons. 2024. Sociology of Law: Towards a Responsive Theory. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-45781-5.
  • Boulanger, Christian. 2020. “The Comparative Sociology of Legal Doctrine: Thoughts on a Research Program.” German Law Journal 21 (7): 1362–77. https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2020.80.
  • Boulanger, Christian, Naomi Creutzfeldt, and Jennifer Hendry. 2024. “The Journal of Law and Society in Context: A Bibliometric Analysis.” Journal of Law and Society 51 (1): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12465.
  • Boulanger, Christian, Naomi Creutzfeldt, and Jennifer Hendry., eds. 2025. Socio-Legal Trajectories Across Europe: Comparative Perspectives. Oñati International Series in Law and Society. London: Hart Publishing. ISBN 9781509982622.
  • Ferrari, Vincenzo, ed. 1990. Developing Sociology of Law: A World-Wide Documentary Enquiry. Seminario Giuridico Della Università Di Bologna Miscellanee 7. Milano: Giuffrè.
  • Galanter, Marc. 1974. “Why the ‘Haves’ Come out Ahead. Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change.” Law and Society Review 9 (1): 95–160. https://doi.org/10.2307/3053023.
  • García-Villegas, Mauricio. 2006. “Comparative Sociology of Law: Legal Fields, Legal Scholarships, and Social Sciences in Europe and the United States.” Law & Social Inquiry 31 (2): 343–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-4469.2006.00014.x
  • Genov, Nikolai. 2020. “Towards a Paradigmatic Enhancement of Sociology.” International Review of Sociology 30 (2): 311–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2020.1776917.
  • Kantorowicz, Herman U., and Edwin W. Patterson. 1928. “Legal Science–A Summary of Its Methodology.” Columbia Law Review 28 (6): 679–707. https://doi.org/10.2307/1113061.
  • Merton, Robert K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press. (Copy in the Internet Archive)
  • Steinmetz, George. 2021. “The History of Sociology as Disciplinary Self-Reflexivity.” In The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences, edited by David McCallum, 1–31. Singapore: Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4106-3_60-1.
  • Tamanaha, Brian Z. 1997. Realistic Socio-Legal Theory: Pragmatism and a Social Theory of Law. Oxford Socio-Legal Studies. Oxford : New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198298250.001.0001.

[1] This post is a summary of a paper presented at the panel “Conducting law and society research in Switzerland I: epistemologies, methods, approaches”, 2nd conference of the Swiss Network for Law and Society (SNLS), University of Bern, 10-12.02.2025. The PDF manuscript is published here. The summary has been produced with the help of a Large Language Model (GLM 4.7 via Chat AI v0.9.2).

[2] For the German-speaking area alone, see those of the Netzwerk Recht und Gesellschaft of the German-language associations for Sociology of Law, of the Berliner Arbeitskreis Rechtswirklichkeit, or, more recently, of the Swiss Network for Law and Society. Internationally, there are many more, such as the meetings of the  Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL), or the meetings of national and regional associations for “Socio-legal Studies”, “Law and Society” or “Sociology of Law”. The field is of course much bigger, as the various “Law and …” movements show.

 


OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Christian Boulanger (9. März 2026). Past, Present and Future of Socio-legal Epistemic Pluralism. Rechtswirklichkeit. Abgerufen am 12. April 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/15u3h


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