http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/36016/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/31570/ 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Intro: To a growing extent, legal scholars seem to be dissatisfied with established disciplinary boundaries and turn to other disciplines, such as sociology (Cotterrell 2006), psychology (Wagenaar, Van Koppen & Crombag 1993), philosophy (Alexy 2003), economics (Posner 2007) and even literature studies (White 1985), for inspiration. In law faculties all over the world multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research groups are operative, such as the Jurisprudence and Social Policy program at the University of California, Berkeley, or the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. In the hope of increasing their chances to acquire a grant, applicants nowadays try to cut a dash with promises of combining insights from many different sources (Vick 2004, 171). One may wonder who will undertake the important but time-consuming task of analysing and classifying the existing body of legal norms in the future, when legal scholars are getting more and more reluctant to do so. However exciting these new research directions may appear, a fundamental question which deserves more attention is: What are the limits and possibilities of interdisciplinary research into law? Can concepts and methods from one discipline directly be transplanted into another discipline? What is lost and what is gained when insights from different origins are combined? In this article, we want to explore what might make interdisciplinary research possible, on the one hand, and what makes it difficult or even impossible, on the other hand. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/38727/ 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z In this paper, I construct a pragmatist theory of legal dynamics. John Dewey’s pragmatism is the starting point for my theory of law. Central to that theory is that law is to be regarded as an interactional practice oriented towards legal values. The core meaning of the concept of law therefore focusses on people’s activities, not on a system of rules. The dynamics of law are influenced by at least two factors often neglected by mainstream legal philosophy: pluralism of norms and practices, and pluralism of lawmakers. By explaining how different legal practices bring about their own norms and how conflicts between these norms are negotiated, I will argue that the dynamics of law are not so much a result of conscious lawmaking but of changing practices. Conscious lawmaking (legislation, regulation) is an important legal practice, but I will argue that the process includes a host of different actors both on a (sub)national and transnational level, such as non-state institutions and groups of citizens, so that it is not only legal officials who make the law. Pragmatist ideas such as the primacy of practice and problem-solving, the continuity of fact and value, and the importance of individual creativity, can thus be used to generate an account of law as a pluralist, problem-solving, value-oriented practice. This pragmatist account can be used to underpin the pluralism of legal orders that is central to the rule of law programme. It can therefore be regarded as a contribution to the conceptual development of the rule of law idea. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26220/ 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z The methods of legal scholarship today are not self-evident. There are various reasons for the growing self-consciousness of legal scholars about their methodology. One of these is the internationalisation of legal research, which among other things has generated a change in the culture of legal publication towards peer-reviewed journals with stricter norms for methodological justification. Another reason is the weakening link between academic legal scholarship and national legal practice, which raises questions about the identity of legal scholarship as something distinct from legal practice and the extent to which methods define legal scholarship. A third reason is the popularity of interdisciplinary research in law, which gives lawyers reason to compare their own methods to those of other disciplines.