ABSTRACT
Taking an overview of the research agenda illustrated by the studies contained in this book, this chapter examines the prospects for a renewed and re-envisaged sociological jurisprudence today. It considers how jurists in complex contemporary societies might interpret their responsibility to promote the values which earlier chapters have identified as components of a flexible but practically useful juristic idea of law. A juristic view of the overall unity of the idea of law as a complex structure of values goes along with a juristic sense of the importance of social unity under law – and therefore of an overarching, integrating value of social solidarity. Sociological jurisprudence must draw on the resources of social science to recognise the conditions under which solidarity can appear meaningful as a value and the ways in which law can express it effectively. Sociological jurisprudence in no way denies the value of conceptual inquiry – which remains central to its project – but it sees conceptualisation always as a means to juristic ends, not as an end in itself. In an uncertain world, a flourishing alliance between jurisprudence and social science is not merely desirable but indispensable.
