This volume cross-examines mainstream approaches to studying legal culture (e.g. those of Friedman and Blankenburg). It includes debates over the concept of legal culture and a variety of case studies of different legal cultures.

Dr Nelken is the recipient of the ISA-RCSL Adam Podgórecki Prize 2011, for outstanding achievements in socio-legal research, in the form of distinguished and outstanding lifetime achievement.

Contents: Introduction, David Nelken; Invoking Legal Culture: Debates and Dissents: The Concept of Legal Culture, Roger Cotterrell; The Concept of Legal Culture: a Reply, Lawrence Friedman; Civil Litigation as Indicators for Legal Cultures, Erhard Blankenburg; Puzzling Out Legal Culture: A Comment on Blankenburg, David Nelken; Comparative Criminal Law for Criminologists: Comparing For What Purpose?, Malcolm Feeley; For a Sociological Use of the Concept of Legal Culture, Carlo Pennisi; Comparing Legal Cultures and the Quest for Law's Identity, Michael King; Gender and Nature in Comparative Legal Cultures, Hanne Peterson. Disclosing Legal Culture: The Production of Difference: An Entrepreneurial Conception of the Law? The American Model through Italian Eyes, Maria Rosaria Ferrarese; Prosecution in Two Civil Law Countries: France and Italy, Carlo Guarnieri; The Enigma of Japan as a Testing Ground for Cross Cultural Criminological Studies, Setsuo Miyazawa; Patient's Rights, Citizen's Movements, and Japanese Legal Culture, Eric A. Feldman; Remembering and Forgetting: the Birth of Modern Copyright Law, Brad Sherman.