The international uses of the notion of legal field

At first sight, the history of the US legal system differs widely from that of the French system. Yet, it is still relevant to analyze it as a "field," to the extent that this notion makes visible a system of structural forces on the basis of three basic methodological principles: it sheds sociological light on the different fractions whose relationships of competition or complementarity are constitutive of the legal field; it embeds the history of legal fields in a sociology of the fields of state power and of elite reproduction; it takes into account the specific character of national fields while also recasting them within a global history of which legal actors have been both the instrument and the outcome. The social and political alliances that are necessary for the production of new legal knowledge impose upon these actors goals that are strategically defined and delimited. In the United States, this process takes the form of the mobilization of the social sciences, and in particular of sociology, at the service of legal policies such as the promotion of new social rights that reach their goals only by generating new legal orthodoxies. In order to establish their credibility as "responsible socio-legal planners," jurists must contribute to establishing the myth of the double legitimacy of law, both from the point of view of a new social science, and from the point of view of a political morality aligned with the ideals of a "welfare state" that is also a "regulatory state."