Legal Ethics in the Next Generation: The Push for a New Legal Realism

Abstract

In the Articles Section of this issue, Law B Social lnquiry is proud to join an emerging “push” in sociolegal studies and legal scholarship toward what some are calling a new legal realism-a synthesis that would draw together empirical work on law and the legal profession, legal and policy scholarship, and the insights of those “in the trenches” (from practitioners and policymakers to the subjects of law themselves). David Trubek, founder of the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin Law School, first noted the need for this new synthesis a number of years ago, calling for “a new realism” in soc,iolegal studies (1977, 545). In recent years, this call has been renewed by scholars concerned with narrowing the divide between much of what is written about law and the practices that constitute law “in action” (e.g., Fineman, Garth, Larson, McEvoy, Mertz, and Wilkins 1997; Cross 1997).