Cambridge University Press has released a two-volume series on New Legal Realism. In these volumes, leading scholars, established and new, from a startling array of disciplinary perspectives, chart an exciting new course for interdisciplinary research on law in the new millennium. The series explicate law-on-the-ground, at the same time integrating empirical research with sophisticated theory. The first volume, The New Legal Realism, Volume I: Translating Law-and-Society for Today’s Legal Practice, co-edited by Elizabeth Mertz, Stewart Macaulay, and Thomas W. Mitchell, lays the groundwork for this novel and comprehensive approach, with an innovative combination of theoretical, historical, pedagogical, and empirical perspectives. The second volume, The New Legal Realism, Volume II: Studying Law Globally, co-edited by Heinz Klug and Sally Engle Merry, explores a crucial part of the new legal realist project, which is the integration of global perspectives and information into our understanding of law. The authors in this pathbreaking volume use empirical research to shed light on current developments in law at a global level.

The third volume, Translating the Social World for Law (published by Oxford University Press), is edited by Elizabeth Mertz, William K. Ford, and Gregory M. Matoesian. This volume examines the linguistic problems that arise in efforts to translate between law and the social sciences. Law and the social sciences certainly qualify as disciplines with quite distinctive language patterns and practices, as well as different orientations and goals. In coordinated papers that are grounded in empirical research, the volume contributors use careful linguistic analysis to understand how attempts to translate between different disciplines can misfire in systematic ways. Some contributors also point the way toward more fruitful translation practices.

 

To see the table of contents and chapter abstracts for each book, click on the pictures below.