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Thinking About Legal Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2014

David NELKEN
David NELKEN*
Affiliation:
Dickson Poon Law School, King’s College, London
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Abstract

This paper addresses the controversial concept of legal culture. It first considers the different meanings of the term and the variety of debates in which it figures. It then goes on to consider difficulties in deciding the units to which the term “legal culture” is applied, and the problems in using the term in explanations. It concludes by examining the way assumptions about what gives legal culture its coherence have implications for explaining how and when it changes. In each section of the argument an attempt is also made to show the relevance of these questions for the Asian Journal of Law and Society as seen in the papers published in its first issue.

Keywords

legal culturecomparative lawsociology of lawcoherencesocial change
Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , November 2014 , pp. 255 - 274
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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Footnotes

*

Professor of Comparative and Transnational Law in Context, and Head of Research, Dickson Poon Law School, King’s College, London.

References

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