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New Bearings in the Sociology of Law

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
DOI10.1177/0964663914543218
Date01 December 2014
Published date01 December 2014
Subject MatterEditorial
SLS543218 487..490
Editorial
Social & Legal Studies
2014, Vol. 23(4) 487–489
New Bearings in the
ª The Author(s) 2014
Reprints and permission:
Sociology of Law
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663914543218
sls.sagepub.com
Chris Thornhill
University of Manchester, UK
Emilios Christodoulidis
University of Glasgow, UK
Conventionally, normative and analytical philosophical approaches (i.e., those of Rawls,
Dworkin, Alexy, etc) occupied an unshakably dominant position in constitutional theory.
Theories of constitutional rule typically isolated the aspect of constitutionalism con-
cerned with fundamental rights from other constitutional functions, and they usually
revolved around the attempt to explain constitutions as documents expressing rationally
defensible norms to govern the distinctively public exchanges of society. This domi-
nance of analytical theory in constitutional inquiry was flanked and reinforced by the fact
that ‘sociolegal’ analysis – with its own particular methodologies and emphases – had
retreated from, or in fact had never really taken occupancy of, the sphere of constitu-
tional debate, and it tended to concern itself with questions located in the sphere of
private law, in regulation, or in criminology; the primary overlap of sociolegal analysis
with a particular subdiscipline of law is clearly still now with criminology. In the rare
cases in which more conventional sociological reflection placed a focus on constitutional
law, for instance, in the works of Gunther Teubner and other theorists influenced by him,
it usually located constitutional law on a continuum with private law. Indeed, the con-
nection between constitutional law and private law was already anticipated by the very
earliest sociotheoretical reflections on constitutional law – for instance, in the writings of
theorists as diverse as Savigny and Marx. In contemporary debate, the indifference of
legal sociology toward constitutional law (construed categorically as public law) is no
doubt in part...

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