Laypeople in Law

Sociolegal Perspectives
Science politique
Sociologie
Auteur(s)
Andrea Kretschmann, Guillaume Mouralis, Ulrike Zeigermann
Publication
June 2024
Appartenance
Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique de la Sorbonne (CESSP)
Éditeur
Routledge

This book contributes to a better understanding of the role laypeople hold in the social functioning of law. 

It adopts the scholarly insight that the law is unthinkable without an everyday legal understanding of the law pursued by laypeople. It engages with the assumption that not only the law’s existence but also its development is shaped by the layperson’s affirmations, oppositions, ignorance, or negations of the law. This volume thus aims to fill a void in socio-legal studies. Whereas many socio-legal theories tend to conceptualize the law through legal experts’ actions, institutions, procedures, and codifications, it argues that such a viewpoint underestimates the role of laypeople in the law’s processing and advocates for a strengthened conceptual place in socio-legal theory. 

This book will appeal to sociolegal scholars and sociologists (of law), as well as legal practitioners and laypersons themselves.

À propos des auteurs

Andrea Kretschmann is Professor of Cultural Sociology and Dean at the School of Culture & Society at Leuphana University, Germany. She is also Associate Researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, Germany.

Guillaume Mouralis is Research Professor (directeur de recherche) in History and Sociology at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), France. He is member of the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique (CESSP) at the Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Ulrike Zeigermann is Assistant Professor for Social Science Sustainability Research at the University of Würzburg, Germany. She is also Associate Researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, Germany.