RCSL Working Groups

For descriptions and more information on the activities of each group contact the Working Group Chair:

Gender: Rosemary Hunter, University of Kent, United Kingdom

The Working Group will organize several sessions at the Berlin conference. The theme for the Working Group sessions is 'Feminism and the Production of Knowledge'. All proposals for papers falling within this theme will be considered for inclusion in the Working Group sessions. Please send paper proposals to Rosemary Hunter by Thursday 30 November Proposals must include an abstract of 100-200 words, and three keywords. Please also let Rosemary Hunter know if you would be interested to act as a chair  and/or discussant for a session, or if you would like to organize a session (comprising 3-5 papers and a discussant) around the Working  Group theme.

Socio-Legal Methodology:  Reza Banakar, University of Westminster, United Kingdom

Legal  Profession: Emmanuel Lazega : Université Paris Dauphine, France

The Working Group for Comparative Studies of Legal Professions was established, more than twenty years ago, by Richard Abel and Philip Lewis, to carry out an international research project on lawyers – how they developed as a profession and how they control their markets. This research was published, at the end of the 1980s in the three volumes of Lawyers in Society. The WG has now extended his activities far beyond its initial centre of interest.

The research topics covered by the WG are increasingly diverse: they include studies of other professions in a comparative perspective, such as the judiciary or notaries, but also question of ethics, large law firms, family , legal education, legal aid, regulatory reform, lawyers and clients, women lawyers, international lawyering, political liberalism. The WG welcomes new participants and will organize sessions on several issues related to the legal professions at the forthcoming 2007 Berlin Meeting . New participants are welcome.

Comparative Legal Culture: Marina Kurkchyian, Oxford University, United Kingdom

Human rights: Stephan Parmientier, Catholic University of Leuven, Beligium

Law and Politics: Maria Angélica Cuellar UNAM, Mexico  

Urban Problems: Edesio Fernandes, United Kingdom

Social and Legal systems: Vittorio Olgiati, Urbino University, Italy

As the general theme of the Berlin 2007 Joint Meeting indicates, for the first time socio-legal “futures” have been formally recognised as a relevant variable in the international agenda of socio-legal study and research. This theoretical and methodological option is precisely what the ISA-RCSL Working Group “Social System and Legal System” aims to develop by organizing session(s) on: “Trespassing Positional Landscapes: Views on Socio-Legal Futuribles”. Let me explain the rationale of this proposal.

In social-scientific terms, futuribles (in English Futures) are a preliminary cognitive dimension of any potential human planning or project: the way and/or the process of sorting out coordinates, directional paths, chances and challenges towards those future states whose forms of achievement are somehow imaginable and reasonably acceptable to us from the point of view of both the state-of-the-art (or science) currently at disposal, and the state of our human conditions, as it appears or is actually experienced in our space-time. Futuribles imply and constitute l’art de la conjecture grounded on a mix of historical facts and experiences as well as on scientific study and research. As such, they foster sociological imagination and counteract stereotyped discourses. For the purpose, it is necessary to escape the temptation to follow mere ideological view-points, and consider the whole bandwidth of signals we can receive from the socio-normative realms under scrutiny according to prospectivist and relativistic approaches. In this sense futuribles are not a matter of, and therefore should not be confused with, mere “social engineering”, even though they might offer some hints in this respect. Researching, debating and understanding futuribles can be achieved by virtue of scenario techniques supported by historical records, i.e. by a deep knowledge of path dependency variables. In fact, scenarios are not projections or predictions to assess the future as such. They are just illustrations of trends open to the future which help to decipher and interpret either emerging transformations or conditions of/for resistance to change. For this reason their design requires a substantial cultural background, a degree of intuition and the ability to synthesize disparate materials.

Law and Popular Culture: Guy Osborn, Westminster University, United Kingdom

The RCSL recently agreed the creation of the above working group to be run under its auspices. There have already been a number of developments in this area in terms of collaboration and research across cultural and geographical borders, and this working group is concerned with further developing this work via the creation of a research network. Initial members of the working group include Guy Osborn (chair) Steve Greenfield, Peter Robson, Stefan Machura and Antoine Garapon.

Our aims include encouraging dissemination of material, fostering fruitful research partnerships and collaborations and further developing the field of law and popular culture. We are keen to add members to this group and any interested parties are encouraged to contact Guy Osborn as regards membership - anyone with an interest in law and popular culture is welcome to join, and we will adopt an inclusive approach to academic areas that may be covered. Please contact Guy Osborn.

European Integration: Harm J.C. SCHEPEL, University of Kent, UK