Political Science, Law And

Political scientists have played an important role in the law and society movement through wide ranging studies of various phenomena. Their research has tended to focus on the study of institutions, particularly judges and courts, differentials in the bargaining power of litigants, and the role of law in social movements. This entry provides an overview of the different types of research political scientists have conducted on legal matters. It is noteworthy that the contributions of these scholars have varied considerably not only with respect to methodology but also to the topics chosen.

While much of the early work in the United States dealt with American legal institutions, primarily judicial politics, increasingly there has been a trend in political science toward taking more comparative and global approaches to the study of law. Furthermore, as the field has become more diverse with women and minorities entering the discipline, this led to a broader range of topics entering the main stream in political science. The new subfields that have emerged in political science in the United States, such as race and ethnic politics, gender, and human rights, attest to the expansion of the discipline.

The origin of the political study of law is ancient. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) compared the constitutions of city-states to figure out what form of government was superior. In the history of law and society, some consider the writings of Charles-Louis de Montesquieu (1689–1755), particularly The Spirit of the Laws, to represent the beginning of sociological jurisprudence. His theory that legal systems varied in accordance with geographical differences such as climate exemplifies the characteristic law and society concern with the empirical investigation of the cultural context of law.

Although the U.S. law and society movement of the 1960s has generally emphasized empirical studies of law, important scholarship relevant to law includes contributions by political theorists. Legal and political theory is a significant part of political science with studies of the nature of rights, justice, liberty, and obligation. The field of political theory encompasses or at least intersects with jurisprudence, constitutional theory, critical legal studies, critical race theory, and cultural studies.

It appears that more political science scholars in countries with common law systems have written about the role of law than have their counterparts in countries with civil law systems. This may reflect the higher status of judges in common law countries, the requirement that judges follow precedent (stare decisis), and the related fact that judicial decisions are published on a much broader scale than in civil law countries. Although the study of judicial politics certainly occurs in civil law countries, for example, at the University of Bologna, political science is less well established abroad. Where it does exist, it has generally not included the study of courts. Moreover, in Europe the study of law and courts, for the most part, has taken place in law schools rather than political science departments. [Page 1138]The consideration of international law, previously neglected by political science and by law and society, has emerged in the twenty-first century as an important part of the mainstream of both disciplines.

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