The Making of Law: An Ethnography of the Conseil d'Etat

by Bruno Latour

In this book, Bruno Latour pursues his ethnographic inquiries into the different value systems of modern societies. After science, technology, religion, art, it is now law that is being studied by using the same comparative ethnographic methods. The case study is the daily practice of the French supreme courts, the Conseil d’Etat, specialized in administrative law (the equivalent of the Law Lords in Great Britain). Even though the French legal system is vastly different from the Anglo-American tradition and was created by Napoleon Bonaparte at the same time as the Code-based system, this branch of French law is the result of a home-grown tradition constructed on precedents. Thus, even though highly technical, the cases that form the matter of this book, are not so exotic for an English-speaking audience. 

What makes this study an important contribution to the social studies of law is that, because of an unprecedented access to the collective discussions of judges, Latour has been able to reconstruct in detail the weaving of legal it is clearly not the social that explains the law, but the legal ties that alter what it is to be associated together. It is thus a major contribution to Latour’s social theory since it is now possible to compare the ways legal ties build up associations with the other types of connection that he has studied in other fields of activity. His project of an alternative interpretation of the very notion of society has never been made clearer than in this work. To reuse the title of his first book, this book is in effect the 'Laboratory Life of Law'.

Genres: Philosophy, Law, Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, Ethnography

280 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2002

About the author

Bruno Latour, a philosopher and anthropologist, is the author of Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, Our Modern Cult of the Factish Gods, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, and many other books. He curated the ZKM exhibits ICONOCLASH and Making Things Public and coedited the accompanying catalogs, both published by the MIT Press.

Reviews

[Tomasz · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worst book by Latour so far. As an ethnography it is underresearched, undertheoretized, ill-informed and misguided. It was supposed to be an application of latourian theoretical and methodological concepts to the process of application of law, but as a subject he choose very peculiar judicial body, and treats it as a mirror of legal process. He didn't care learning much about law beforehand, but tried again a role of naive amateur coming to a foreign tribe. It worked fine for the laboratory reasearch, but here it is a disaster. He does not address important issues, presents some banal observations as genuine discoveries. His conclusions are dubious and does not bring anything new to the field. Important ideas and theoretical concepts are buried under a heap of rubbish.
Futhermore, after this book I grew to hate his style. Nevertheless, I will keep reading Latour, because he has important things to say.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bruno Latour is a single-man reading challenge momentum killer.

[Guillermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating look at the law as a social process

[Mika · Rating 3 out of 5]

General purpose reading if you do any kind of legal empirical research, good to be up to speed with the literature. But also the kind of book you read if you wanna cosplay as an intellectual.