1998 Presidential Address—Making Connections: Law and Society Researchers and Their Subjects

This essay explores the theme of the 1998 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association: "Making Connections across Disciplines, Theories, and Methods," focusing in particular on the connections between researcher and subject and between researcher and researcher. The essay discusses three recent articles, by Joseph Sanders and V. Lee Hamilton, by Barbara Yngvesson, and by Margaret Montoya. These articles illustrate recent creative efforts by law and society researchers to forge new kinds of connections to their subjects. The articles also illustrate fundamentally different conceptions of the role of the researcher and of the methodologies on which sociolegal studies might be based. These differing conceptions are considered as part of a more general argument that epistemological contradictions are an essential part of our efforts to apprehend the world we seek to describe. They connect law and society researchers to one another and ensure the vitality of our field. This year's Program Committee announced an evocative theme for our meeting: "Making Connections across Disciplines, Theories, and Methods." I want to explore the theme of "making connections" in my talk today. Law and society scholarship takes many forms, ranging from surveys to experiments to historical studies to ethnographies. But somewhere near the core of much of our research is a connection between two people, the researcher and the subject. I would like to offer an appreciation of the ways in which law and society scholars make this important connection and, at the same time, to celebrate the contribution of the so-called subjects of our research-"so called" because our interviewees have often been more like partners in producing new and surprising understandings of law and legal institutions. From Stewart Macaulay's Wisconsin lawyers and businessmen (1963) to Malcolm Feeley's (1979) judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, from Jane Collier's Zinacantan villagers (1973) to Valerie Hans and Neil Vidmar's (1986) trial jurors, our research subjects have spoken to us about the presence-and absence-of law in their everyday lives, and we have listened. The term "research subject" is problematic in several ways, but it is especially problematic if it suggests mindless passivity. Our interviewees are not potted plants. Sometimes they take over the encounter and leave us wondering who has set the agenda. Twenty years ago, I interviewed a Baptist minister in my study of a rural Illinois community. Halfway through the interview, he said, "And just as you've interviewed me, I'm interviewing you.... If God were to take your life today, do you know [if] you'd go to heaven?" He went on to say, "This is important . . . I could help you." What kind of help was he offering? Was he trying to help me learn more about law and community in Sander County, which I had thought was the purpose of our interview? No, he seemed to have something rather different in mind. His helpful intentions soon became clear when he told me, "You can be saved, right here in this office today, if you just simply give your life to Christ. Would you like to do that?" As I left his office, I mentally placed a check mark next to his name on my interview list of community observers. I imagine he also placed a check mark next to my name on a list of his own-a list of souls who wandered through town and, in his view, needed counseling on the one and only way to get to Heaven. Interestingly, Erwin Smigel (1969) provides a similar account of his interviews with Wall Street lawyers. They, too, were inclined to seize control of the interview agenda. Thirty years ago, Smigel (p. 24) wrote: A researcher approaching these [lawyers] on their "home grounds" must be wary lest he become the respondent and the lawyer the interviewer! As the investigator sits in one of the soft chairs usually offered, it may be he who . . . finds himself confiding his feelings and revealing his problems. …