Introduction to Research Handbook on the Sociology of Law

Abstract

Handbooks have become increasingly popular among academics and their publishers in the last two decades. They are an intellectual response to the growing complexity and sheer amount of research conducted in all areas of science, including sociology of law and socio-legal studies. They also are an effect of digitalisation of scientific communication, online accessibility and new ways of research dissemination. While monographs and edited books related to the specific research areas often struggle to draw attention, generalising and synthesising volumes bringing together different disciplines, theories and perspectives offer an overview and intellectual orientation in relevant areas of academic research. Handbooks on the most diverse themes and problems, from global constitutionalism and philosophies of law to the legal regulation of railway transport and virtual reality, have been published in recent years. Their popularity is particularly strong in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research of law. A researcher interested in ‘law and society’ or ‘law in context’ studies, therefore, can already use a number of collections, such as: the three volume Encyclopedia of Law & Society, edited by David S. Clark (2007); the extensive Law and Society ‘mini-library’ in four volumes, edited by Dave Cowan, Linda Mulcahy and Sally Wheeler (2014); The Handbook of Law and Society, edited by Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick (2015); the Journal of Law and Society’s special supplement Main Currents in Contemporary Sociology of Law, edited by Jiří Přibáň (2017a); and, most recently, the Routledge Handbook of Socio-Legal Theory and Methods (Creutzfeldt, Mason and McConnachie 2020). Furthermore, handbooks on law and gender (Ashford and Maine 2020), race and class (Jackson 2015), science and technology (Brownsword, Scotford and Yeung 2016), medicine and health (Jacob and Kirkland 2020), crime and criminal justice (Tonry 2011) and other areas of national and transnational law (Halliday and Shaffer 2015) provide for the most detailed mapping of studies of law in social context. Numerous edited volumes on law and other social phenomena, and problems and themes, are being published in book series specialising in law and society studies by many academic publishers every year.