Lecture 2.

Anthropology and sociology of law

These two factors consider factors such as cultures, languages and institutional arrangements. Every single
one of these factors compose the so-called Meta-Legal data. On the actual level, there is a sort of social
grammars: it means that through our behaviour we express the culture of our community.
Social grammars is a sort of rule grammars: grammars in the sense that there are rules to express. We don’t
have just social rules, and rules of social actors: we have also
 Semantics: branch of linguistics, logic conceived with meaning. Sometimes the use of the word
could be misunderstood. Sometimes we text with someone and then on the other side we face a
reaction in the recipient which was not expected to us. When we are face-to-face there are not just
words, there is also our behaviour. Social grammar helps the semantics. Considering the law, it is
important to have a clear understanding of this level of knowledge.
 Pragmatics: how everything in concrete works. How we apply the rules expressed by the social
grammars.
There are processes of meaning, interpretation and adaptation. There is not just the legislator with statutes
and rules, there are not just scholars that interpret these rules, there are not just judges that apply these
rules; there is the society, which is the recipient of these rules.

Legal Data and Meta-legal Data

The word community expresses its identity and culture. It gives the rules produced by the legal process a
meaning. The word community lives with the rules produced by the legal process. Here we can catch the
difference between legal data and meta-legal data (text and context).
 Legal data is composed by the outcomes of the law process. It is made by statutes, European
Directives. International conventions, judicial decisions, principles drafted by academics. Contracts
written by lawyers: they are officially sources of law.
 Meta-legal data: composed by factors such as history, philosophy, religion, languages, beliefs,
mentality.

Global Law Map

Concept conceived by Philip Wood. It presents to us the “Colours”, the different legal systems. Among the
variety of legal systems, there are three models, which influence the others. Actually, 90% of the global
legal systems are inspired by three basic models:
 The English one (40%)
 The German one (20%)
 The French one (30%)
According to Wood, mixed legal systems, such as in Japan, are composed of common law/civil law tradition.
Japan and China didn’t face private law: when an issue in terms of private law arose, private parties solved
it by themselves. After the communist revolution, China did not need private law, since everything was
common. Everything was public-law based.
Japan understood that private law was important to regulate foreign investments: at the end of the 19 th
century, the Japanese government decided to translate German and French civil code, and these were the
ground for Japanese Codifications. During the 20 th century, they formed the civil codifications.
In China, starting from the 80s, the legal codification took many years, since they wanted to decide what
the better choice was. Common Law or Civil Law? They went for the Civil Law tradition. Before drafting the
Civil code, they studied the civil law tradition (its sources and also Roman Law).
The World bank in 2004 produced the so-called Doing Business Report: in this report there are many
criteria, which serve to make an evaluation of the legal system of the world and they make scores; they
make a sort of ranking, and then decide which legal system are more efficient and which are not.
Since the Doing Business Report was made in the U.S., it showed a biased approach: common law was
considered to be the best legal system.
Usually, Common-law countries we have the best innovations, but in civil law countries rules are codified
and more clear. We also have the protection of people, which is considered the most important challenge
of a country, even more than the markets.
So, innovations and stability are two different principles, if you want more innovations you can go to
common law countries, but you won’t have the same protection as in civil law countries. Consider for
example, the Trump use of Twitter. In U.S., freedom of speech is one of the most important freedom; you
can express yourself even a violent way.
The same does not apply in EU countries (this is an expression of different mentalities and different social
grammars).

Uniform vs. Diversified

These elements give us the context in which law works.
 History: component of the context and is also an element of uniformization. We are sharing the
same history and the more and more we will share uniformity. History is composed of social and
economic developments. They both have an impact on the legal process.
- Social development: ex. same sex marriage
- Economic development: Antitrust regulations/Competition law (more or less uniform, with a lot
of similarities).
 Mentality: the way through which people think. Law has to be considered as an intellectual
product.
 Culture: composed of philosophy, religion, ideology of a country.
 Language: one should insist on the fact that the law is, basically, a linguistic convention on which,
by and large, a community agrees. The law is generally expressed though words, which are
combined, interpreted and put into action through other words.

Anthropology vs. Sociology of Law

Anthropology of Law
Specialized in the cross-cultural study of social ordering these people made their nation change through
skills and inventions. Helps to understand the reasons of similarities and differences between legal systems
in the world.

Sociology of Law
Studies human behaviour in society in so far as it is determined by commonly recognized ethical legal
norms and in so far as it influenced them. Helps to understand the reasons of
 different human behaviours despite same rules, or
 same behaviours despite different rules.