Socio-legal Studies at the Heart of Jurisprudence

The paper comments on a presentation by Barbara
Hughes-Moore at the occasion of a seminar series to
celebrate the founding of the Journal of Law and Society.
It draws on the metaphor ‘the law is dead’, ‘the
law is alive’ used by Hughes-Moore, which reminds of
Eugen Ehrlich’s thoughts, the ubiquity of law and the
place of socio-legal studies at or close to the heart of
jurisprudence in the United Kingdom. Barbara Hughes-
Moore speaks of the ‘gothic’ qualities of law. Law can
be two things at once. The double-coding of communications
forms a major insight into Niklas Luhmann’s
sociological systems theory. Law is many things and has
become too complex to be fathomed as an entity. This
has consequences for legal scholarship and may favour
the socio-legal approach championed by the Journal of
Law and Society.