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Law Through Sociology’s

Looking Glass: Conflict and

Competition in Sociological

Studies of Law

Reza Banakar

Law and its countless legal, academic, by juxtaposing sociological and legal epis-
professional and institutional manifestations, temes, i.e., by comparing the collections of
all being intrinsically social, fall within the beliefs, concerns and assumptions which are
scope of sociological inquiry. It is, therefore, used to organize worldviews and practices of
not surprising if some sociologists and jurists lawyers and legal scholars, on the one hand,
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have tried to bring the benefits of sociologi- and those of sociologists, on the other. It
cal ideas to legal thought and practice. then moves on to present the various research
Introducing sociological insights into law, a approaches, such as Law and Society and
feasible and useful project in theory, has Socio-Legal Studies, which make use of
however been only marginally accomplished social scientific methods and concepts to
in practice. Despite the social make-up of study law. Although it is often impossible
law and the kinship between legal theory and to distinguish between certain branches of
social theory, the former being a branch of socio-legal research, I shall nonetheless dis-
the latter, and despite the efforts of socio- cuss similarities and commonalities between
legal scholars over the past hundred years to various approaches to the study of law,
integrate legal and sociological ideas, law focusing specifically on the (inter)disciplinary
and sociology remain apart. conflicts and competitions between them, as
This chapter explores the roots of this a method for highlighting the discourses
separation by describing some of the con- which constitute the sociological studies of
flicts and competitions which arise out of, law. The chapter concludes by reflecting on
and impede, attempts to integrate legal and the potential of law and sociology to learn
sociological understandings of law. It starts from one another.