Journal of Law and Society最新文献

On this, the occasion of its 50^th anniversary, we employ a quantitative analysis of the Journal of Law and Society (JLS) to chart empirically the evolution of socio-legal studies in the United Kingdom (UK). By tracing the influence(s) of the JLS upon the development of UK socio-legal research, not only do we demonstrate a new mode of exploring knowledge production in the field of socio-legal studies, but we also illustrate how computational methods can augment hermeneutical approaches to mapping socio-legal trends. Through (a blend of) three different analytical approaches – descriptive analyses of bibliographic metadata, text-linguistic analyses of a corpus of full-text articles, and network analyses of citation graphs – we generate comparative information about the JLS since its inception in 1974. We then employ this data to interrogate the JLS’ own narratives; using predictions, ambitions, and statements of intent made by Editor-in-Chief Phil Thomas published either within or regarding the JLS, we present a map of the journal's role within, impact upon, and enduring contribution to UK socio-legal studies. Finally, we discuss our results and propose future directions of the field.

Peaceful protesters across Europe are facing increasingly punitive and intolerant legal frameworks. Why has the law become more repressive? How are new offences reshaping the boundaries of democratic participation and state control? Beyond their overt function of maintaining order, what do these laws reveal about power, politics, and contested civic values in liberal democracies? This article attends to these questions. Taking the Public Order Act 2023 as its focus – a statute frequently cited as emblematic of protest criminalization but not yet given close scholarly examination – the article conceptualizes the Act as emerging from, and integral to, what sociologists term a ‘cycle of contention’. Through this lens, the article identifies and develops two complementary accounts of law's relationship with protest, power, and contention: (1) functional and (2) deliberative. This analysis reveals protest law not simply as a tool of demobilization, but as a deeply expressive means through which competing visions of ‘public wrongs’ are defined, justified, and constituted within a political community.

This article draws on recent theoretical interventions into the relationship between time and law to make sense of the role of time in the context of immigration bail hearings in the United Kingdom. It presents an analysis of the ways in which the Home Office, the First-Tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), and immigration judges manage time, and proposes that the impacts of this management are threefold. First, there is a trend towards the speeding up of hearings. Second, there is a simultaneous trend towards the slowing down of hearings. Third, both of these trends are mobilized to generate specific atmospheres that indirectly manage time. In exploring both the obvious and the obscured ways in which time is managed, this article untangles the seemingly contradictory processes of simultaneous speeding up and slowing down, facilitating a fuller understanding of the consequential ways in which power operates within immigration tribunals.

This article is a contribution to the occasional series dealing with a major book that has influenced the author. Previous contributors include Stewart Macaulay, John Griffith, William Twining, Carol Harlow, Geoffrey Bindman, Harry Arthurs, André-Jean Arnaud, Alan Hunt, Michael Adler, Lawrence O. Gostin, John P. Heinz, Roger Brownsword, Roger Cotterrell, Nicola Lacey, Carol J. Greenhouse, David Garland, Peter Fitzpatrick, David Nelken, Lynn Mather, Terence C. Halliday, and Mariana Valverde.

This article provides an empirically informed account of the processes for resolving labour disputes in the Philippines. Moving beyond earlier studies that have focused on the ineffectiveness of formal processes, we widen the scope of our inquiry to examine the labour dispute resolution regime as a polycentric regulatory framework. We focus on disputes about firms’ labour-hire practices to explore the roles of state-based and non-state-based regulatory actors and the interaction of formal and informal processes within the dispute resolution regime. Despite the failings of the formal dispute resolution system, we find that it provides a central focus for these disputes and that regulatory actors move fluidly between formal and informal processes to bolster their legitimacy claims and to overcome obstacles in the formal system. The strategic use of informal processes also allows workers’ representatives to influence the broader political and economic forces that underpin the widespread adoption of precarious working conditions.