Roger Cotterrell (Queen Mary University of London, School of Law) has posted New Meanings for an Old Debate (Journal of Law and Society, volume 52, issue S1, 2025) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper is part of a symposium revisiting the Cotterrell-Nelken debate published in 1998 in the Journal of Law and Society. Cotterrell’s paper ‘Why Must Legal Ideas Be Interpreted Sociologically?’ presented an argument about methods of juristic inquiry, rather than about the nature of sociology of law. It claimed that juristic analysis of legal doctrine must be sociologically grounded. Such an analysis does not thereby become sociology of law or necessarily promote an instrumental or technocratic view of law. Jurisprudence and sociology of law have different objectives. However, sociology, insofar as relevant to legal interpretation, should be seen as a study of social relations grounded in values, tradition, and emotion, as well as instrumentality. As such, it is needed to inform juristic thought. Correspondingly, sociology of law should be concerned, for its own purposes, with conceptualising law, taking account of juristic ideas in doing so but not being confined by them.