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From Movement to Mentality, from Paradigm to Perspective, from Action to Performance: Law and Society at Mid‐Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Austin Sarat
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Abstract

Kitty Calavita's Invitation to Law & Society: An Introduction to the Study of Real Law (2010) offers a broad and useful overview of the intellectual accomplishments of law and society scholars and a self‐confident assertion that they perform an invaluable service by focusing on “real law,” that is, law in action rather than law on the books. This essay argues that the field is more fragmented than Calavita notes and that law and society research is neither engaged with a common set of questions nor organized around a single central insight or an agreed‐upon paradigm. Moreover, this essay raises questions about Calavita's claims about “real” law and suggests that we complement law and society's traditional focus by examining the varied performances of law, whether in texts or in the world beyond those texts.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , Winter 2014 , pp. 217 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2014 

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