New Legal Realism and the Ethnography of Transnational Law

The new legal realism builds on the strengths of the legal realism of the early twentieth century, viewing law as a set of social processes embedded in historical and political contexts. As it addresses sociolegal phenomena of the early twenty-first century, however, the new legal realism is more attentive to the effects of transnationalism, legal culture, and legal consciousness, and the way ideas and norms travel and are adopted around the world. Asking questions of this kind requires new, more multi-sited or deterritorialized methods of scholarship. This article explores these new perspectives and their methodologies through an examination of the use of human rights in the international movement against violence against women.