The development of socio-legal studies in the United Kingdom

There is no agreed definition of socio-legal studies: some use the term broadly to cover the study of law in its social context, but I prefer to use it to refer to the study of the law and legal institutions from the perspectives of the social sciences (viz all the social sciences – not only sociology). The last decade has seen many developments in this enterprise. Many younger academic lawyers became dissatisfied with the traditional type of legal scholarship, which concentrated on the internal consistency of the law and the inter-relationship of different legal rules. They showed great interest in studying the realities of the law in action, the social effects of law and the relationship of law to wider questions of social structure, and naturally turned to the social sciences for assistance.