Working Group on the Comparative Study of Legal Professions

The International Sociological Association (ISA) works through research committees, one of which is the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL). Adam Podgórecki (1925–1998) and William Evan founded the RCSL during the Cold War to bring sociology of law to the heathen—that is, to countries in which it did not exist, and to support the sociology of law in states in which it was threatened by government, predominately the countries of Eastern Europe. Though the RCSL had limited success in those endeavors, it has acted in Europe, Latin America, and Japan as an antidote to the threat, real or imagined, of the cultural imperialism of the American Law and Society Association. Politics aside, sociolegal scholars actualize the RCSL intellectually through working groups. One of these—in fact, the largest and most productive—is the Working Group on the Comparative Study of Legal Professions.

The Working Group was the brainchild of Philip Lewis of Oxford. His efforts to organize comparative [Page 1593]research on legal professions began in 1977 at a RCSL meeting in Saarbrücken, Germany. Richard Abel from the University of California, Los Angeles, joined him after the 1979 meeting in Cagliari (Sardinia) and the Working Group gained official status in 1980. Disappointed with the manner in which earlier instances of large-scale comparative research on legal institutions seemed unable to deal effectively with linguistic and cultural differences, Lewis and Abel argued for “federated” research. The idea was that contributions from different countries would speak in the terms and about the institutions and practices in their countries in a manner that made sense locally, even if that made “comparison” difficult.