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This chapter provides a deconstruction of a British call for the formulation of an Islamic diasporic jurisprudence, in which juridical activity is proposed as a mirror. It begins with a review of theoretical works on diaspora and the legal sociology of jurisprudence. It explains and discusses the author's view of what a “diasporic jurisprudence” is, and uses this concept to examine the text of a speech given by a Muslim intellectual-activist before an assembly of Muslim British college students in London in December 1995. It is argued that in the vein of cultural studies, “culture” is neither an autonomous nor an externally determined field, but a site of social struggle and differences. Thus, when we bring together the analytical concepts “diaspora” and “jurisprudence,” we are juxtaposing two words that reciprocally constitute a particular social field in which symbols and scruples can be appropriated and contested. Although a bit of an oil-and-water combination, these two concepts (diaspora and jurisprudence) hold as if suspended in a colloid, sustained by opportunity spaces allowing them to assert claims for rights and forms of justice.

This chapter presents the Pure Theory of Law's discussion of natural material fact (act) and meaning, self-interpretation of social data (subjective and objective meaning), the norm as scheme of interpretation, the norm as act and as meaning, validity and sphere of validity of the norm, and cognition of legal norms vs. legal sociology.

This chapter examines the medieval Icelandic law book Grágás as it is contained in the medieval manuscripts Staðarhólsbók (AM 334 fol.) and Konungsbók (GKS 1157 fol.), and explores in what ways the two manuscripts can be considered to function as external tools of legal cognition. The aim of the chapter is to explore how the modern concept of distributed cognition can aid us in understanding historical phenomena, in this case, the function of two medieval Icelandic codices containing collections of laws. The chapter outlines what lines of thought and reasoning the examined medieval codices support when used for finding relevant legal norms or charting applicable law. In order to clarify the relation of the historical development of distributed legal cognition and its textual tools, the chapter’s conclusion compares the Grágás manuscripts to an early modern Icelandic legal manuscript (AM 60 8vo), and to modern statute collections. This comparison shows how the distribution of legal cognition to textual tools slowly developed within the textual culture of a formerly predominantly oral society without a significant domestic administrative literacy.

This chapter discusses legal families, legal culture, and context. A legal family is structured genealogically, with a parent legal order and its historical offspring or siblings. There are many classification systems for legal families. Classifications of legal systems do not necessarily have to be one-dimensional, they can just as well be hierarchical. Meanwhile, the idea of legal culture has long played an important role in comparative law. However, it is heavily burdened by its origin in legal sociology. Context thus becomes the core concept not only of individual comparison, but also of overall type comparison. In an individual comparison, working with context requires taking into account the entire legal and non-legal environment in which every legal rule exists. In a type comparison, the elements of this environment are aggregated.

This chapter begins by discussing the line of demarcation between legal politics and other politics. It then covers the theoretical foundation and tasks of legal politics. With regard to the theoretical foundations, it argues that the necessary insight is the juridico-sociological knowledge of the causal connection between legal regulation and human behaviour; or the insight into the issue of how it is possible to influence human behaviour through the function of legal machinery—which, in turn, is determined by legal regulations. With regard to the tasks of legal politics, it argues that the first task is to examine the attitudes and objectives that are currently prevalent in influential social groups, and thereby determinative of the organs that have the formal power to legislate. The next step in a juridico-political inquiry is to describe the juridico-sociological facts and contexts operative in relation to the premise. The third and last step in the juridico-political investigation is the formulation of conclusions in the form of instructions to the legislator or the judge.

The Epilogue wraps up the discussion with respect to selected recurring themes. Section two carries out a comparative assessment of the overall performance of the judicial expert advisory panels in the EU and the ECHR. Section three critically revisits the selection criteria coined by the 255 Panel. In section four, a theme problematic in both European systems and tackled throughout the volume is revisited: the lack of transparency and control of the operation and output of the advisory panels and, by implication, the overall European judicial selection process. Finally, sections five and six deal with the more sociological questions: what type of European judges are the new criteria and procedures likely to generate? Section seven concludes with reflection as to whether or not a working language of a court that is no longer so widely spoken might not in itself operate as an obstacle in attracting top judicial candidates.