Comparative Analysis of Social and Legal Change

社会变革与法律变革之间关系的重要方面包括法律的形式、内容以及在法律领域内发生变革的过程。新成立的政府的首要决定之一是法律的内容。这是由政治领导人的信念决定的，包括他们认为可以在法律秩序内解决的实质性关切。第二个相关的决定是法律秩序将采取什么形式。这一决定的实质是形式主义和信息主义的混合，这是法律的特征。对法律和社会变革的研究一直受到阻碍，原因是对信息主义缺乏概念上的明确性，以及未能在对社会的结构和历史影响的更广泛的背景下确定法律形式和内容的变化。本项目通过分析法律内容的具体变化、法律的形式主义和非形式主义的混合以及这种混合与拉丁美洲社会主义法律秩序中的法律内容之间的关系来审查这些方面。古巴和尼加拉瓜这两个对法律秩序采取了不同方法的社会主义政权，其政治经济结构发生了显著变化，是研究的自然背景。分析的核心是理解形成法律机构特定方面的历史和结构因素。这种方法既是比较的，也是历史的。纪录片数据和对主要演员的深度采访将被演绎和归纳使用，方法是在一个网站上测试理论框架，并在比较网站出现新信息时进一步完善模型。这一研究弥合了立法结构分析与非正式正义与正式正义辩证关系研究之间的鸿沟，从而加深了我们对法律与社会变革关系的理解。法律专业人员的作用、从其他国家借入法律的战略以及古巴和尼加拉瓜倡议的具体情况也具有重要的政策影响。最后，这项研究将通过加强我们对法律领域形式主义和信息主义之间的紧张关系的理解，为关于美国非正式司法选择使用的研究提供参考。

Important dimensions in the relationship between social and legal change include the form of law, its content, and the process whereby change occurs within the legal arena. One of the first decisions of a newly established government is the content of law. This is determined by the beliefs held by the political leadership and includes substantive concerns that they think can be addressed within the legal order. A second and related decision is what form the legal order will take. The essence of this decision is the mix of formalism and informalism that characterizes the law. Research on legal and social change has been hindered by a lack of conceptual clarity regarding informalism and a failure to locate changes in the form and content of law in the broader context of structural and historical influences on the society. This project examines these dimensions through an analysis of specific changes in the content of law, the mix of formalism and informalism of law, and the relationship between this mix and the content of law in Latin American socialist legal orders. Cuba and Nicaragua, two socialist regimes that have taken different approaches to legal order and which have undergone marked changes in their political-economic structures, are the natural settings for the research. Central to the analysis is an understanding of the historical and structural factors that shape particular aspects of legal institutions. The methodology is both comparative and historical. Documentary data and in-depth interviews with key actors will be used deductively and inductively by testing the theoretical framework in one site and further refining the model as new information emerges from the comparison site. This research bridges the gap between structural analyses of lawmaking and research on the dialectical relationship between informal and formal justice, thus enhancing our understanding of the relationship between legal and social change. The role of legal professionals, the strategy of legal borrowings from other countries, and the specifics of Cuban and Nicaraguan initiatives have important policy implications as well. Finally, the study will inform research on the use of informal justice options in the U.S. by enhancing our understanding of the tension between formalism and informalism in the legal arena.