ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand the law in action and in context. To that end the work collected treats ‘the law’ in the broad sense of Recht, or le droit. It is in part a legal history, but one that goes beyond a history of doctrinal change, or even legal-philosophical intellectual endeavours. Any investigation of ‘the law’ meets the wider problem of adequately explaining the context in which law operates. In considering all this it is important to distinguish the present particular focus on legal culture from other closely related areas of study. One is the broad academic field of ‘law and society’ which has existed since the 1950s and which is closely associated with the subject of the sociology of law. The other is the anthropology of law, with a strong legacy of comparative historical treatment which continues to thrive.
