Socio-Legal Generation

This book honors the diverse and path-breaking work of Michael Adler, a pioneer of socio-legal scholarship in the UK. The book brings together an international group of scholars—established and emerging researchers from across the globe—to develop key ideas generated by Adler’s scholarship. Building on his rich portfolio of creative work at the interface of law and social science, the book explores themes that continue to resonate in contemporary debates about how best to understand the relationship between justice, fairness, and the modern administrative state. Specifically, the book re-examines core issues which Adler, as a key figure of the first generation of UK socio-legal scholars, explored, including: the relationship between official discretion and the rule of law; the justice of internal administrative processes; the importance of a ‘bottom up’ perspective on justice; power and accountability in the prison sector; access to justice for social welfare claimants; and the promise of viewing law through the lens of social science. Sharon Cowan is Professor of Feminist and Queer Legal Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Simon Halliday is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Strathclyde, UK.