Group Law in Analysis – Workshop on Anthropology, History, and Sociology of Legal Practices and Representations

Research projects

The Group Law in Analysis – Workshop on Anthropology, History, and Sociology of Legal Practices and Representations is based on the premise of the artificial, contingent, historical, plastic, and sociocultural nature of all legal phenomena, as well as the very idea of Law in its various forms. It emphasizes the impossibility of analyzing Law and the science that underlies it without the teachings of other practices and knowledges.

The Group adopts an interdisciplinary approach characteristic of the CIDPCC in its theoretical-methodological discussions and scientific practice, rejecting the effective autonomy of any legal practices and representations, especially those that focus on discourses related to discipline and deviance, freedom and equality, public and private, process and judgment, crime and punishment.

The research activities developed in the workshop share a common denominator: in the study of legal phenomena, particularly those set against the political-legislative, academic-scientific, and judicial-jurisdictional contexts, they critically employ analytical concepts and theories used in contemporary social sciences. The objective is to identify the conditions of possibility, meanings, and limits of the discourses through which Law is produced and human coexistence is tentatively ordered.

Researchers: Ana Fouto, Filipe de Arede Nunes, Jorge Silva Santos, Luís Cabral de Oliveira, Margarida Seixas, Míriam Afonso Brigas

Activities:

• Permanent Research Seminar, held biweekly (with group researchers and invited experts)
• Publication of “Direito em Análise – Journal of Anthropology, History, and Sociology of Legal Practices and Representations”
• Organization of the VI Hispano-Luso Meeting of Legal Historians – Norm(s), Deviance(s), and Judgment(s)
• Conferences on specific themes (with researchers and invited experts)
• Graduate Course on Sociocultural Analysis of Law, held annually
• Graduate Course on History of Criminal Law, held annually