How Legal Intermediaries Facilitate or Inhibit Social Change

Abstract

This article explores how legal intermediaries facilitate or inhibit social change. We suggest the increasing complexity and ambiguity of legal rules coupled with the shift from government to governance provide legal intermediaries greater opportunities to influence law and social change. Drawing from new institutional sociology, we suggest rule-intermediaries shape legal and social change, with varying degrees of success, in two ways: (1) law is filtered through non-legal logics emanating from various organizational fields and (2) law is professionalized by non-legal professionals. We draw from case studies in the United States and France to show how intermediaries facilitate or inhibit social change.

Citation

Talesh, S. and Pélisse, J. (2019), "How Legal Intermediaries Facilitate or Inhibit Social Change", Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 79), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 111-145. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-433720190000079007