The praxeological study of law aims to analyze practices concerning what professional and lay people identify and treat as law. It seeks to describe the modalities of production and reproduction, the intelligibility and understanding, and the structuring and public character of law and its many legal activities.

Four principles characterize the praxeological approach. First, one pays attention to the means used to produce an action in a way that allows others to understand it. Second, one identifies social facts as ongoing [Page 1171]social and collaborative productions within culturally identified contexts. Third, one describes toward what participants in particular settings are oriented. Finally, one pays attention to people as rule-using, not ruledetermined, creatures.

In the praxeological perspective, which emanates from the work of Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks, ...