ABSTRACT
In this chapter we provide an overview on how lawyers think and work in practice, as well as what can be called background knowledge in sociology and political sciences, in order to clarify the meaning of basic terms and theoretical concepts of our interdisciplinary approach. In the first section about law in practice we discuss the basic institutional structures of any legal system and how lawyers interpret and apply legal texts in the meaning of positive (i.e. man-made) law in their everyday practice as judges, civil servants or attorneys. In the second section we give – from the epistemological and methodological perspective of social constructivism – a simplified overview of basic concepts, definitions and terms that we use in this book, such as system, structure, function, institution, human agency, personality, role behaviour, discourse analysis and deconstruction.
