Centre for Sociology of Law

Organisation profile:The Centre for the Sociology of Law (CRS) from the University of Antwerp in Belgium has been conducting mostly empirical research since 1972. In very general terms, the Centre focuses on scholarly research on the interface between law and society. Certain topics have been dealt with repeatedly in past studies (e.g. family law, administration of justice, legal assistance, judicial backlog) and still belong to the centre's primary focus of attention. In recent years, the CRS has tried to transcend policy-oriented short-term research on the basis of a purely quantitative methodology by adopting a more fundamental and qualitative (i.e. empirical) long-term approach. Presently, the Centre is active in three main research domains: legal aid, legal ethics in law firms and evaluation of legislation. The study of legal aid is characterised by a comparative approach with the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom and France as reference countries. The theme of ethics is explored by in-depth interviews with lawyers from top 5 law firms in Belgium. The third pillar, evaluation of legislation, is built on an earlier doctoral thesis produced by one of the members of the CRS. It focuses on the methodology, as well as on the institutional aspects of an evaluation policy, with the aim of conducting `real life' evaluations of laws.

Keywords:LEGAL ETHICS, SOCIOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, LAW, LEGAL PROFESSIONS, EVALUATION, LAWYERS

Disciplines:Applied sociology, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology, Law, Other law and legal studies