Book Reviews: KITTY CALAVITA, Invitation to Law and Society: An Introduction to the Study of Real Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 176, ISBN 9780226089966, £29.00 (hbk)
| Author | Mike Adler |
| Published date | 01 March 2011 |
| Date | 01 March 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639110200010702 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
KITTY CALAVITA, Invitation to Law and Society: An Introduction to the Study of Real
Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 176, ISBN 9780226089966,
£29.00 (hbk).
Kitty Calavita’s book Invitation to Law and Society is quite explicitly modelled on Peter
Berger’s classic text Invitation to Sociology which was published in the USA in 1963 and
in the UK in 1966. Berger’s book provides a humanistic account of what was, at the time,
a relatively unknown discipline, and was intended both for the lay reader who was
interested in finding out more about sociology, and for students and teachers of sociol-
ogy, for whom it mapped out a distinctive orientation to the discipline. In contrast to the
prevailing positivistic conception of sociology, which sought to apply ‘scientific’ tech-
niques to the study of society and to explain how society works, Berger outlined a more
humanistic conception of a discipline that has close links to the humanities and that seeks
to understand the meaning of social reality. Berger’s book outlines the contributions of
the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology and reviews the contributions of leading sociologists
from the perspective of the position it espouses.
Law and Society, as a distinctive approach to the study of law, has some of the same
characteristics as sociology had 40–50 years ago. It has a low profile and its characteristics
are not widely understood. This is Kitty Calavita’s starting point and, at the beginning of the
book, she recounts an anecdote in which a taxi driver who was driving her to the annual
meeting of the Law and Society Association misunderstands why she was in Chicago and
questions her about the best time to plant a lawn. However, unlike Peter Berger, her view of
the field she has written about is that it is a ‘broad church’. Just as Berger was concerned, in
Invitation to Sociology, with the relationship between individuals and society, so Calavita is
concerned, in Invitation to Law and Society, with the relationship between law and society.
Unfortunately, the reader is not given much of a sense of what law is or how it is to be
understood. According to her, ‘defining law is a tricky business’ (p. 24). After a brief review
of contrasting definitions, she concludes that ‘[w]hether we should make law synonymous
with rules for social behaviour and mechanisms of control ... or reserve the word to refer
to specialised and formal institutions ... is open to debate’ (p. 29). It is arguable that a book
such as this ought to have provided a fuller account of that debate about what constitutes
law and given some indication of the author’s own position.
Calavita’s short and readable book comprises six substantive chapters dealing with
some of the most familiar law and society ‘themes’ together with an introduction and a
conclusion. The thematic chapters deal with the relationship between law and society
(mentioned above); the pervasiveness of law in society; law and racism; legal pluralism,
the gap between ‘law-on-the books’ and ‘law in action’; and law and the realization of
social justice. Quite how or why these particular themes were chosen is not made clear
but one of the strengths of the book is the emphasis it places on the ‘gap problem’, which
is arguably the defining characteristic of law and society scholarship. However, it would
have been instructive if the book had provided some indication of the questions that
doctrinal studiesof ‘law-on-the-books’ seek to address and the answers they provide. After
all, law and society scholarshiphas grown up in response to and as a reaction against doc-
trinal legal scholarship and an understanding of the characteristics and achievements of
doctrinal legal scholarshipcan therefore contribute to an understanding of law and society
Book reviews 121
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