Law, Geography of

Work on the geography of law focuses on the relationships of law and legal questions to the study of spatial phenomena. Initially developed by a community of scholars working across their respective disciplines, it took shape as a subdiscipline in its own right in the 1990s, usually referred to as legal geography, with a modest if growing presence in English language geography. In the broadest terms, work in this tradition posits that there exists a serious and substantial link between law (reflected in legislation, court decisions, administrative tribunals, etc.) and the geographical shape of the social, political, and cultural worlds. This is seen in many different ways, from [Page 1764]the legal organization of international relations down to municipal ordinances governing urban zoning and districting, the ...