{"id":23,"date":"2007-08-02T11:07:56","date_gmt":"2007-08-02T15:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/pon1\/2007\/08\/02\/beyond-law-and-order\/"},"modified":"2007-08-02T11:07:56","modified_gmt":"2007-08-02T15:07:56","slug":"beyond-law-and-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/2007\/08\/02\/beyond-law-and-order\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond “Law and Order”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The definition of sociology, my major back at school, is somewhat difficult to pin down.\u00a0 <\/span>Seems like a pretty basic thing to know, and yet I\u2019ve always had a hard time figuring out exactly how to word it, despite having been in classes for three years now. \u00a0<\/span>According to the trusty department website, sociology \u201cexamines the ways in which the forms of social structure and various social institutions affect human attitudes, actions, and opportunities.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I have understood sociology in terms of healthcare; in terms of race, gender, and class; in terms of business; in terms of politics.\u00a0 <\/span>But for some reason, I never really thought about the sociological aspects of law.<\/p>\n

This might just be due to my own romanticized notions about law, stemming from watching way too many episodes of Law and Order<\/em>\u2019s Ben Stone arguing cases as Assistant DA in the early 90s.\u00a0 <\/span>But while I know that laws themselves often result from and bring about societal change, I thought that the practice of lawyers is supposed to be immune from those societal factors.\u00a0 <\/span>My understanding is that once the law is set, it is the lawyer\u2019s job to enforce that law, even if outside influences or cultural norms discourage it.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

But even if this is true, it seems that lawyers are still forced to navigate outside influences, pressures that are external to the actual negotiation or court session.\u00a0 <\/span>The research that I\u2019m doing on ethics in dispute systems design centers on this exact problem.\u00a0 <\/span>How may lawyers who are conducting dispute system design processes face ethical dilemmas?\u00a0 <\/span>Where do their role as lawyer and their role as neutral come into conflict?\u00a0 <\/span>Should lawyers involved in dispute system design be constrained by the same rules as lawyers acting as advocates?\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Granted, in this case the lawyer\u2019s objective is not to settle a specific case or argue on behalf of a client.\u00a0 <\/span>But it is to create a mechanism by which disputes can be resolved, and where perceived wrongdoing may be challenged.\u00a0 <\/span>In a dispute systems design situation, the lawyer\u2019s objective is, in the most basic sense, to make a law.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

This means that a lawyer must<\/em> take stock of the contextual and societal factors inherent in the environment, and their dispute resolution system must strike a balance between accommodation of these norms and objectivity in the face of competing interests.\u00a0 <\/span>Not an easy task, especially when you take into account the fact that lawyers are also bound by their own Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which may themselves conflict with a lawyer\u2019s position as neutral dispute systems designer.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

But maybe that\u2019s where law as a discipline is inherently sociological:\u00a0 <\/span>while lawyers are bound to enforce the law at all costs when acting as advocates, they are not so constrained when designing dispute resolution systems.\u00a0 <\/span>Because disputes arise out of culture, it has to be a lawyer\u2019s job to perform the task of a sociologist:\u00a0 <\/span>to examine those \u201cforms of social structure and various social institutions\u201d that are causing conflicts.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I realize here that I\u2019m really only confirming the stereotype that sociology is a mushy major (\u201cEverything<\/em> is sociology!\u201d).\u00a0 <\/span>But viewing the potential dilemma of lawyers as dispute systems designers in a sociological way could open up a whole new set of questions about the connections between law, neutrality, society, and culture.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The definition of sociology, my major back at school, is somewhat difficult to pin down.\u00a0 Seems like a pretty basic thing to know, and yet I\u2019ve always had a hard time figuring out exactly how to word it, despite having been in classes for three years now. \u00a0According to the trusty department website, sociology \u201cexamines […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":920,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pon-intern"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}