Charting the 'Classics' in Law and Society: The Development of the Field over the Past Half-Century

• Author: Calvin Morrill and Kelsey Mayo
• Pages: 18-36

The Handbook of Law and Society, First Edition. Edited by Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick.

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Introduction

How does one define a “classic” work in a scholarly field? One answer can be found

in how the work exceeds expectations of its primary audience or identifies a novel

way to characterize and/or explain what is taken for granted in a phenomenon

(Davis 1986). While such attributes are clearly necessary, they are not sufficient to

explain how or why a work becomes a classic. In this essay, we complement attempts

to identify the “canon” of law and society by devoting greater attention to the histor-

ical variability and visibility of socio‐legal works (Seron and Silbey 2004; Seron,

Coutin, and Meeusen 2013). We argue that scholarly audiences come to view highly

visible works as legitimate, and when such works share focal research questions,

they can coalesce into dominant styles defining a scholarly era. Dominant styles

may not approach a paradigm nor periodic shifts in style take the form of a scientific

revolution (Kuhn 1962), but our approach enables us to track highly legitimated

research in the field and, as a result, how the field has changed over time.

Cultural sociology and social movement theory provide clues for thinking about

the pathways to legitimacy for scholarly works. Lamont (1987), for example, argues

that the legitimacy of scholarly work results from the “complex interplay” among

substantive and rhetorical characteristics of a work, its authors, and intellectual and

public audiences. Legitimacy is especially likely for works that go with the flow, so to

speak, of the institutional and cultural tempers of the time and speak to multiple

intellectual audiences while maintaining distinctiveness as “unique packages.”

Frickel and Gross (2005) add scientific/intellectual collective action as another key

mechanism that contributes to the legitimation of emergent and delegitimation of

established scholarly works. Status and resources play key roles in these dynamics.

Charting the “Classics”

inLawandSociety

The Development of the Field

overthePastHalf‐Century

Calvin Morrill and Kelsey Mayo

2

Charting the “Classics” inLawandSociety 19

Scholars with proven track records, at high‐status universities, or with access to

legitimating professional positions, such as academic editors of scholarly journals

and/or academic presses, conference organizers, research center directors, program

chairs and deans, or professional association officers, can more easily mobilize

scholars in pursuit of particular research questions, thus expanding their sphere of

influence beyond proximate social circles.

To measure scholarly visibility, we use citation counts, which provide a ready

indicator of scholarly visibility yet do not represent a “true” metric of scholarly impor-

tance. Indeed, such a metric does not exist. Our point of departure lies with the

origins of the Law and Society Association (LSA) in the 1960s, resonating with

previous historical accounts of the development of the field (Garth and Sterling 1998;

Abel 2010). A discussion of our methods appears in the methodological appendix.

We interpretively identify three eras in the field over the past half‐century defined

by the twenty most cited works from each era: the law‐in‐context era (1960s–1970s) in

which the most visible socio‐legal research focused on how social, cultural and

economic contexts influence the operation of formal legal institutions, especially

courts and police in the United States; the decentering era (1980s–1990s) marked by

highly visible works identifying the interplay of legality and other normative systems

as lived practices and cultural consciousness apart from or in the margins of formal

legal institutions; and the global era (1990s–present) in which highly visible works

reimagined law in transnational perspective, outside its traditional moorings to nation

states. Figure2.1 locates these eras on a time line with the forward arrows suggesting

that research questions from earlier eras still inform scholarship in later periods. As

with most historical analyses involving periodization, the eras we identify overlap one

another and have somewhat fuzzy boundaries (Haydu 1998), although at its core each

era tells a distinct story about what law is, how it matters, and why it should matter.

The Law‐in‐Context Era (1960s–1970s)

The central character in the story of the law‐in‐context era is not law, but rather

social context. In the most frequently cited historical work of this or any subsequent

era, for example, law professor, legal historian, and former LSA president Lawrence

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Law-in-context era

Decentering era

Global era

Figure2.1 Eras in the Field of Law and Society, 1960–2010