This chapter on the sociology of legal culture asks what the term is good for and what part it plays and could play- in socio-legal research. It surveys research that uses the term, focusing on differences between using it to describe a set of facts, as an approach sociology of law, and as an aspiration to a value - that of the culture of legality.As a set of facts, it is important to decide what units we are talking about, and what, if anything, gives them their coherence; as an approach, to distinguish between explanation and interpretation, and their appropriate logics and methods; and as a value to see what hidden cultural assumptions may be guiding our preferences, for example in encouraging state-based versus alternative forms of ordering whether at home and abroad.
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