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A Research Committee of
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Adam
Podgòrecki Prize
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Toulouse, 2013: Introduction to the Topic As part of its regular activities, the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL) of the International Sociological Association (ISA) organizes, jointly with the Institut d’études politiques de Toulouse, an international congress on sociology of law, to take place in Toulouse, 3-6 September 2013, under the heading: Sociology of Law and Political Action. Over recent years, it proved to be necessary to discuss the topics of the RCSL’s specialty – Law and its implementation, notably by courts – in strong connection with the study of broader processes regarding, beyond the law, the modes of structuring, functioning, and regulating of societies in general. Researches on law found thereby the way back to the main founding fathers of sociology, for whom law deserved special interest not only for itself but also because its analysis was considered as a prerequisite for a meaningful interpretation of major social changes. These were the motives that led to the main topic of the congress. Its discussion has two aims: to tackle broad current social changes likely to be illuminated by socio-legal research, rather than to narrowly focus on socio-legal issues; and to take advantage of an international trend in scientific research strengthening the connections between law and politics. Indeed, over the last years, we observe deep transformations of political regulation. The government as a notion is replaced by governance; Nation States are loosing significance in the course of globalization; their modes of intervention are shifting from top down decision processes to more complex processes of negotiation and regulation, forcing analysts to replace the concept of public action by the one of public policy; representative democracy is said to be in crisis; the relationship between legality and legitimacy has to be redefined as a result of the shortcomings of the Weberian model of legal-rational domination; civil society invents new forms of mobilization, etc. These evolutions did favour new research trends in sociology of law, which also correspond to more general new trends in social sciences, in particular in political sciences, sociology, history, and jurisprudence, especially in the field of public law. These trends are bringing about a new economy in the relationship between legality and politics. They contributed to narrowing the gap between research on courts (e.g. research in the United States, where law and justice are topics traditionally addressed by political sciences; see also research in Japan) and research oriented by the needs of jurists, focussing mainly on State’s law (which is in particular the case for European and in particular French socio-legal research). And they triggered a dynamic renewal of sociology of law, today less concerned with its identity and frontiers of sociological specialty than with the challenging issue of the changing relationship between law and politics. So there has been more and more researches on the production of law as revealing political processes ; on the law viewed not as a mere reference, but as a resource among others for the action of social movements, as well as for public policies aiming at achieving “efficiency”, even at the expense of the “requirements of legality” (“managerialization of Law”); on the law as participating in the construction of social reality beyond the intervention of official entities supposed to act upon this reality (see the debate on legal consciousness). Such a legal concept favours a new definition of the relationship between citizens and legal norms with a view to the accomplishment of the democratic project. In these dramatic changes of law and of legal consciousness, legal professions are gaining special relevance. People skilled in the use of the legal resource are becoming key players in the political game (see the international research stream on cause lawyering). The debate on globalization gives increasing relevance to law and courts in supra-national territories. And, last but not least, let us remember the researches on the “legalization of politics”. The programme of the Congress is strongly inspired by this new knowledge regime, linked to the transformations of the nature, role, and place of law today. It is designed to discuss aspects of these transformations in plenary sessions gathering internationally recognized specialists, as well as in workshops mirroring the plurality of possible different approaches to the relationship between law, justice, and politics. The main topic chosen requires a broad interdisciplinary approach. The involvement of the Institut d’Études politiques of Toulouse, and the support of the French Political Sciences Association reveals the strong commitment of French political sciences in this exercise. Other social sciences are welcome too, as well as, obviously, jurists, to whom RCSL owes its existence, as it is worth remembering now in 2012, the year of this Research Committee’s 50th anniversary. (The organizers of the Toulouse Meeting - RCSL Newsletter 2012 (2))
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