num_pages: 399
description: Social science has been an important influence on legal thought since the legal realists of the 1930s began to argue that laws should be socially workable as well as legally valid. With the expansion of legal rights in the 1960s, the law and social science were bound together by an optimistic belief that legal interventions, if fully informed by social science, could become an effective instrument of social improvement. Legal justice, it was hoped, could translate directly into social justice. Though this optimism has receded in both disciplines, social science and the law have remained intimately connected. Social Science, Social Policy, and the Law maps out this new relationship, applying social science to particular legal issues and reflecting upon the role of social science in legal thought. The contributors to this volume share the belief that social science can and should influence legal policy making.
language: English
title: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Law
titlecomplete: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Law
ratings_count: 2
publisher: Russell Sage Foundation