Perspectives of Legal Culture

Abstract

Despite many doubts and criticisms, the use and popularity of the term legal culture have been growing steadily since 1969, when Lawrence Friedman first coined it. Regardless of the difficulties in conceptualising and operationalising legal culture, it is widely used in research and theoretical work. This paper investigates how researchers are overcoming conceptual issues, as well as the similarities and differences in approaches to legal culture and their effects on the comprehensibility and coherence of the concept. Through a systematic literature review of scholarly papers published in two citation bibliographic databases – Web of Science and Scopus – that contain the term legal culture in the title, this paper identifies definitions of legal culture, theoretical assumptions, research methods and specific topics depicted within the field of legal culture. The analysis indicates heterogeneous approaches to legal culture, accompanied by inconsistency in understanding and applying the concept. The notion of legal culture is related to various topics but mainly used as an intervening variable; without empirical research, authors use the term as hypothetical and self-evident, assuming its impact on law and society. Besides, the analysis identified various forms of defining and explaining the legal culture and different methodologies, amongst which a descriptive approach prevails. Based on the insight into scholarly articles on legal culture, the review concludes with suggestions for improving future research and the explanatory power of legal culture.

Sociological Impact of Cyber Laws on Media: Virtue Community and Controversies

“…The empirical analysis and understanding of the complex relationships between cyber law, legal features, institutions, and social issues are central to this field of study [7,8]. It delves into a variety of socio-legal topics, such as the social growth of legal institutions, forms of social control, legal regulation, the interaction of legal cultures, the social construction of legal concerns, the legal profession, and the link between law and society [9][10][11]. To improve its knowledge of legal phenomena, the sociology of law frequently depends on research from other disciplines, such as comparative law, legal theory, law and economics, and law and literature [12][13][14].…”

ЕЩЕ РАЗ О ФЕНОМЕНЕ ПРАВовОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ

“…Материалы, на основе которых написана данная работа, представляет собой публикации отечественных и зарубежных исследователей [1], различные формы теоретических исследований, по представленной теме, юридические материалы, касающиеся проблем феномена правовой культуры. В качестве использованных в рукописи методов можно отметить и назвать ряд традиционных общенаучных методов исследования, например, метод теоретического синтеза, метод сравнительного анализа, диалектический метод и др.…”