Volume 27, Issue 2

This article contributes to the discussion of the participation rights of children from the gender perspective and examines legal procedures as a forum in which processes of gendered subjectivation occur. Findings of a study undertaken in Switzerland that compared juvenile justice and child protection procedures leading to children and juveniles being placed outside the family are presented. It is argued that both procedures contribute to the wider societal project of children’s gender-specific socialisation. With regard to the number of face-to-face interactions occurring between authorities and children and/or their parents, the juvenile justice procedure can be characterised as childcentred. On a discursive level, its focus on overcoming the criminal impulse and on the exercise of self-control can be understood as supporting ideas of male socialisation. Child protection procedure on the other hand is, from a quantitative point of view, equally attentive to both children and parents and can therefore be characterised as family-centred. Discursively, this procedure potentially supports an ideal of female socialisation, defining girls and women predominantly in relation to others through the use of an image of the dependant child in need of protection.

The article attempts to bridge the gap between jurisprudence and social anthropology by presenting research regarding the application of legal theory and methodology in the context of legal pluralism. It analyses two court decisions dealing with customary law of the Khasi, an ethnic group living in Northeast India, from the perspective of legal pluralism. The first case demonstrates how customary law is employed to determine an indeterminate legal concept. The second illustrates the way in which Hindu law, the law of the majority, is used to compare and interpret the law of the Khasi minority. From a legal pluralist perspective, a quasi-mathematical application of law to resolve its conflicts is irrelevant. Importance is instead attributed to the attempt of describing the legal praxis as objectively as possible in order to discover the reciprocal influences, mixtures and boundaries of legal systems. Findings demonstrate that it is essential to consider judges’ views not only in terms of their legal education and use of concepts, but also regarding gender. The article concludes by questioning how legal pluralism can be embodied within legal dogmatics.

In the classic courtroom speech, two components were central for persuasion: the narratio and the argumentatio. In contemporary legal rhetoric, both story telling as well as providing and requesting reasons play a central role in the production of knowledge within legal proceedings. In linguistics, narration and argumentation are often considered to be fundamentally distinct forms of text. In classical rhetoric, however, the two have not been considered to be mutually exclusive. The boundaries between them have also not been strictly drawn in contemporary theory. This paper therefore investigates the relationship between narration and argumentation within criminal proceedings through examining the example of an actual criminal case. Firstly, I shall briefly discuss the contrasting perspectives regarding criminal proceedings, focusing upon the views of narrative and argumentation theory. Secondly, I will follow a theme through the proceedings with respect to its narrative and argumentative forms and functions. I argue that within criminal proceedings, stories are established as products of a process of ‘truth-constitution’ through their transformation into arguments.

This article highlights the spatial dimension of norms, an aspect of their social reality that is rarely considered. It examines issues such as where you are permitted or expected to do something, and where you are not. This raises the question of whether norms and how they are used in urban space are locally embedded. Based on a qualitative understanding of research, an experiment is used as a seldom applied but revealing method in order to empirically analyse this relationship. The author’s experiment of sitting in a deck chair and thus breaking norms in five different urban spaces produced both interesting outcomes and interpretations. In conclusion, the relationship between norms and space is revealed and the experiment is demonstrated to be a useful empirical method with the potential to be developed further.

This contribution focuses on the experience of illegal residence amongst migrants from Central Africa living in Germany. As a reaction to social exclusion, migrants develop particular legal practices that they understand to be a continuation of the legal culture in their homeland. However, these group-specific regulation mechanisms are also strongly influenced by German migration law and the new power relations this establishes between migrants. This social experience influences migrants’ general perception of order and hierarchies, as well as their individual redefinition of their own position in the country of origin. The difficulty of reconciling their perception with social reality has for many migrants undermined their initial plans to return to where they came from.

An instrumentalist understanding of legal reactions on international crimes has not established its proper place within scientific discourse. This can be attributed not least to the lack of knowledge concerning the effects of these sanctions. This article thus firstly outlines a systematic analysis of the effects of international criminal law. Secondly, the consequences resulting from this instrumentalist understanding of law are described as they manifest themselves in the study of reactions to crimes committed during the Argentinean military dictatorship (1976-83) and during the rule of the Apartheid-Regime in South Africa.

The year 2002 witnessed the creation of a new variety of judge in France. Referred to as “proximity judges”, their introduction to the French justice system attempted to build an alternative justice founded upon conciliation and informal procedures. The article examines court reforms from the perspective of changing state regulation. A comparison with the unification of civil and criminal justice at the beginning of the twentieth century indicates that judges’ increasing professionalism and the growing tendency to resort to law for dispute resolution are related to an expanding involvement of the Jacobin state in social regulation. Nevertheless, the current destabilization of the state does not allow much further development of alternative solutions.

The article deals with the application of law in the public administration of prostitution regimentation. A focus is placed upon the administrative personnel’s patterns of perception and action, which are identified via conducting and analysing qualitative interviews with experts. Through exemplary case studies, the relevance of administrative personnel’s patterns of interpretation and occupational orientations, as well as options for action and discretion in their application or non-application of the law, are highlighted. It consequently becomes clear that law in action depends not only upon law itself, but also upon how the administrative personnel interprets and applies it.

From the very beginning, the field of “Rechtssoziologie” (Sociology of Law or Socio-legal Studies) in Germany had to struggle for academic recognition on the “borderline” between the disciplines. Despite rather hostile conditions, it succeeded in gaining recognition during the 1970s and 80s. By the end of the 90s, however, the field experienced a serious crisis. Although its scientific relevance is currently undisputed, its future remains relatively unclear. This article traces the recent history of “Rechtssoziologie” in the Federal Republic of Germany. Comparing its development to that of the Law and Society movement in the United States, the author argues in favour of a “Rechtssoziologie” which is understood as a multidisciplinary project that should cover all areas of empirical and theoretical research on law as a social phenomenon. Thus, in contrast to approaches that confine “Rechtssoziologie” to Sociology of Law in a narrow sense or try to integrate socio-legal perspectives into doctrinal jurisprudence, the article argues for a field that comprises a diversity of disciplines. The article is part of a wider debate surrounding the future of socio-legal research in Germany, prompted by the editors of the German Journal for Sociology of Law (Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie) in 2000.