Where Are We Now and Where Should We Head for? a Reflection on the Place of East Asia on the Map of Socio-Legal Studies

I. INTRODUCTIONCollaborative Research Networks ("CRNs") were originally developed by the Law and Society Association ("LSA") to encourage collaborations between scholars who shared research interests at its annual meetings in Miami in 2000 and in Budapest in 2001 (a joint meeting with the Research Committee on Sociology of Law ("RCSL")). 1 After those meetings, some CRNs decided to continue, and many CRNs were newly developed under LSA's authorization. Many CRNs now organize several thematic sessions at each annual meeting.As its title suggests, CRN33 on East Asian Law and Society is one of the newest CRNs. For the joint annual meeting with RCSL in Berlin in 2007, LSA developed International Research Collaboratives ("IRCs") to encourage collaboration among scholars and facilitate attendance from different countries. One of the IRCs was titled "Legal Professionalism in East Asian Context," organized by Yoshitaka Wada, Carol Jones, and Kay-Wah Chan. The Berlin conference attracted a large number of scholars with interests in East Asia. Yoshitaka Wada, Kay-Wah Chan, and I thought that it might be possible to establish a more permanent network of scholars with a wider range of research interests in East Asia under the scheme of CRNs. We submitted an application to LSA in the same year, and LSA quickly approved it as the thirty-third CRN.CRN33 started its activities by organizing eleven sessions at the 2008 annual meeting of LSA in Montreal, and has organized eight to fifteen sessions at every LSA annual meeting since then. It also started biennial regional meetings, organizing the Inaugural East Asian Law and Society Conference in Hong Kong in 2010, which was followed by the Second East Asian Law and Society Conference in 2011 in Seoul. CRN33 will hold the Third Conference in Shanghai in 2013.2CRN33 now has more than 280 names on its mailing list. In addition to sessions organized or co-organized by CRN33, there are also a large number of sessions at every LSA annual meeting with presenters from East Asia or presentations on East Asia. Socio-legal scholarship on East Asia appears to be thriving, at least in the context of LSA.Should we want more? I think we should. Specifically, the issue I wish to raise is the contribution of insights and findings from East Asia to the development or refinement of general socio-legal theories that are applicable beyond the borders of East Asia.This speech has the following four steps: 1) I will trace appearances of East Asia in the socio-legal literature since the late 1960s; 2) I will examine the status of East Asia in the current terrain of the socio-legal literature; 3) I will discuss a sample of the most recent publications, which show promising signs of treating East Asia as an integral part of general theory-building in socio-legal studies; and 4) I will conclude by discussing what extra efforts are required for us to give East Asia the central place it deserves in socio-legal scholarship.This plan entails some clear risks. First, while I conducted extensive library and internet research, my review will inevitably be selective. I will certainly be blamed for oversights or omissions. Second, I will review the field and present arguments from a perspective which is far more ambitious than my own achievements and abilities. I will certainly be blamed for arrogance. Nevertheless, I would like to move on, because it is my role here.II. EAST ASIA IN THE SOCIO-LEGAL LITERATUREA. Selection of Law & Society Review for the Literature ReviewResearch is usually published first as a journal article. The first step of my analysis is therefore to review articles published in a major socio-legal journal. I chose Law & Society Review (LSR), which has been published by LSA since 1966, for this purpose.There are, of course, several other journals. For instance, law and economics is extremely influential in American legal scholarship, and the Journal of Law & Economics and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies may be more widely read in law school communities than LSR, which publishes more articles based on sociology, political science, history, and other non-economic social science. …