Roger Cotterrell and Law's Sociology of Law
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00729.x |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
Review Article
Roger Cotterrell and Law's Sociology of Law
Michael King*
LAW, SOCIETY AND COMMUNITY. SOCIO-LEGAL ESSAYS IN HONOUR
OF ROGER COTTERRELL edited by RICHARD NOBLES AND DAVID
SCHIFF
(Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2014, 356 pp., £75.00)
Roger Cotterrell's academic career started in the heady days of the 1970s
when many of us believed that the social sciences held the key that would
unlock the door to universal knowledge on how best to control people's
behaviour and regulate social life for the benefit of all society's members.
Justice, security, equality, and wellbeing for everyone were, it seemed at the
time, all just around the corner. All that was needed was an army of skilled
researchers, backed up by clever theorists, who would provide a framework
of understanding to make sure that the right questions were asked and the
right interpretations applied to research data, and enlightened judges and
policy makers to put their findings into practice. As one of the few legal
scholars who had actually studied (and actually understood) social theory,
Roger seemed well placed to release academic law from the dark place
where the black-letter doctrinalists and Oxbridge legal philosophers had
imprisoned it and to do so, what is more, waving the banner of scientific
enlightenment.
As with most books published in honour of renowned academic scholars,
several of the chapters in this collection tell us more about the interests and
concerns of the individual contributors than they do about the scholar whose
work and life they are celebrating. This does not necessarily mean that they
are any less valuable or interesting for that, but they do make life difficult for
a reviewer, who is forced to jump from topic to topic with no real underlying
themes other than those imposed ex post facto by the book's editors. For this
649
*School of Law, Foxhill House, Whiteknights Road, University of Reading,
Reading RG6 7BA, England
m.j.king@reading.ac.uk
ß2015 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2015 Cardiff University Law School
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