THE SOCIETAL IMPACT OF LAW: An Assessment of Research

Abstract

In the current climate of skepticism about the capacity of law to ease social problems, legal impact research can perhaps add to our understanding of the limitations of using legal initiatives to produce social change. This article assesses the descriptive and explanatory knowledge provided by legal impact research over the last decade, identifies the primary obstacles that impact researchers have faced, and suggests promising paths that students of legal impact might take. While impact studies no more demonstrate that law is ineffective in achieving policy goals than they do the reverse, the former interpretation is most likely to be made given the dominant tenor of contemporary political discourse. To reduce the chance of erroneous interpretations, it is proposed that researchers take several steps to make their analyses more “context‐sensitive.”