Where is the Law Living?
Résumé
This article highlights the shortcomings of S. Silbey’s conception of law in enabling her to fully address the compelling question of the “social sources” of law. However, can we disregard the problem of identifying when, precisely, the practices we observe are not so much the expression of the domination of the State mediated by the rules it forges than a form of “living law” in action at the level of a social group? Independently of the criteria of law, when do we switch to one side or the other? Maybe it is the research methodology itself – the absence of an ethnographic approach – that prevents S. Silbey from describing fully the reciprocity of the interrelationships between social practices and formal law, and thus going beyond the mere question of the daily experience of the latter.