The Making of Law - B. Latour

In this book, Bruno Latour pursues his ethnographic inquiries into the different value systems of modern societies. After science, technology, religion, art, it is now law that is being studied by using the same comparative ethnographic methods. The case study is the daily practice of one of the French supreme courts, the Conseil d'Etat, which specializes in administrative law (the equivalent of the Law Lords in Great Britain). Even though the French legal system is vastly different from the Anglo-American tradition, it just happens that this branch of French law, although created by Napoleon Bonaparte at the same time as the Code-based system, is the result of a home-grown tradition constructed on precedents. Thus, even though highly technical, the cases that form the subject matter of this book are not so exotic for an English-speaking audience.

What makes this study an