Laypeople in Law Socio-Legal Perspectives on Non-Professionals

This book contributes to a better understanding of the role laypeople hold in the social functioning of law.

It adopts the scholarly insight that the law is unthinkable without an everyday legal understanding of the law pursued by laypeople. It engages with the assumption that not only the law?s existence but also its development is shaped by the layperson?s affirmations, oppositions, ignorance, or negations of the law. This volume thus aims to fill a void in socio-legal studies. Whereas many socio-legal theories tend to conceptualize the law through legal experts? actions, institutions, procedures, and codifications, it argues that such a viewpoint underestimates the role of laypeople in the law?s processing and advocates for a strengthened conceptual place in socio-legal theory.

This book will appeal to sociolegal scholars and sociologists (of law), as well as legal practitioners and laypersons themselves.

Introduction 1. Laypeople in Law: Moving from a Blind Spot in Socio-Legal Studies Towards a Comprehensive Field of Research Ulrike Zeigermann, Guillaume Mouralis, Andrea Kretschmann I. Distinctions: On Blurring Boundaries of Laypeople and Legal Experts 2. Laypeople’s Attitudes Towards and Experiences With the Law Stefan Machura 3. Ebb and Flow: Framing and Sidestepping in Relationships Between Laypeople and Legal Intermediaries Jérôme Pélisse II. Contributions: On Laypeople in Law-Making, Norm Interpretation and Judicial Formalisation 4. Creating Social Existence Through Law: Laypeople’s Successful Struggle for a Certificate of Miscarriage Julia Böcker 5. Ecocide and the Co-Production of International Environmental Norms Through Laypeople Ulrike Zeigermann III. Appropriations: On the Mimesis of Judicial Forms 6. Mobilising International Law, Subverting the Judicial Form: The 1967 Russell Tribunal as an Experiment in Utopian Justice Guillaume Mouralis 7. Russell Tribunal II on Repression in Brazil, Chile, and Latin America (1974–1976). The Success and Limits of Transnational Legal Mobilisation Caroline Moine IV. Structurations: On Law as a Shaping Force 8. Legal Consciousness Without Legal Culture? A Comment on Ewick and Silbey’s The Common Place of Law Axel Pohn-Weidinger and Julia Dahlvik 9. Laypersons’ Judgments on Fictive Cases: Public Perceptions of Gender-Based Violence in France and Germany Benedicte Laumond 10. Beyond the Law? Laypeople in Law, Civil Disobedience, and Conceptions of Violence Aldo Legnaro

Andrea Kretschmann is Professor of Cultural Sociology and Dean at the School of Culture & Society at Leuphana University, Germany. She is also Associate Researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, Germany.

Guillaume Mouralis is Research Professor (directeur de recherche) in History and Sociology at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), France. He is member of the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique (CESSP) at the Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Ulrike Zeigermann is Assistant Professor for Social Science Sustainability Research at the University of Würzburg, Germany. She is also Associate Researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, Germany.