Rechtswissenschaft als transdisziplinäres Netzwerk Zur Verortung von Rechtssoziologie und Rechtsvergleichung

In a far-sighted contribution to the first issue of the "Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie", Dieter Martiny argued in 1980 for a rapprochement between sociology of law and comparative law. On the occasion of the anniversary of this journal, the following article undertakes a re-reading of Martiny's text and traces points of contact between sociology of law and comparative law in recent decades in an entangled history of both disciplines. Such points of contact include projects of harmonization and quantification of law that have brought both disciplines high reputation of practical applicability but left important methodological questions unanswered. More recently, the globalization-driven pluralization of law has led to the closest interweaving of the two disciplines to date. At the same time, singular disciplinary boundaries are losing their significance and are being replaced by a multidimensional, mobile system of changing disciplinary fragments. This is described here as a transition from an interdisciplinary to a transdisciplinary paradigm of legal research. The latter is based on the image of a network of disciplines interested in law, including sociology of law and comparative law. This transdisciplinary paradigm is likely to increasingly guide the disciplinary relationships of future legal research.