Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Neo-institutionalists like Neil McCormick and Ota Weinberger brought a significant shift to jurisprudence by viewing law as a specific social fact – the institutional one. This perspective moved away from the voluntarism of traditional legal science, pointing instead on social practices as a locus of law’s normativity. While this approach emphasized the factual aspects of law, neo-institutionalism primarily maintained an analytical and normative stance. Our analysis aims to highlight its potential for exploring alternative paths, such as engaging in sociological and other empirical research of law. We believe that John Searle’s social ontology, from which neo-institutionalists borrowed the concept of institution, provides substantial motivation for such direction. In this paper, we tried to detect those aspects of Searle’s theory of institutions from which themes/hypotheses for sociological and other scientific research of law can be derived, as well as to point out the possible directions of their development.
Source: Eudaimonia
DOI: 10.51204/ivrs_24201a
Author: Anja Bezbradica
Institution: Institute of Comparative Law
Language: English
Topic: Legal and Social Philosophy
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4407923506