CARLSON_GALLEYS (DO NOT DELETE) 7/25/2013 3:34 PM 407 FOUND IN TRANSLATION: THE VALUE OF TEACHING LAW AS CULTURE Kerstin Carlson   ABSTRACT Although the study of law within its larger culture is emerging, recogni- tion of law as culture is still generally nascent within legal studies and pre- professional programs. In fact, the greater recognition of law’s social and political role may have impeded a consideration of law’s role as culturally specific. Yet, as law practice becomes more globalized, such awareness is an increasingly necessary element of any practitioner’s toolkit. This Article explores three examples of cross-cultural blunders to demonstrate the ne- cessity of being sensitive to law in cultural context. INTRODUCTION Those outside the legal community might be surprised to learn that law students spend three years studying the abstractions of what the law is without ever necessarily engaging in the question of why the law is this way. Many U.S. law schools, for example, offer one full year of contract law without ever considering what it means for the government to enforce agreements made between private individuals and what sorts of agreements representative govern- ment might therefore be interested in enforcing. If political science and theory have often helped reify law by considering it as a uni- form topic (leaving the discussion of the content of law to special- ists, i.e., lawyers), lawyers have traditionally repaid the favor by closely studying the substance of law without considering its at- tendant impact on political science or theory. 1 - - Assistant Professor, International and Comparative Politics, American University of Paris; J.D., Ph.D., Jurisprudence and Social Policy, in progress, University of California, Berke- ley. I would like to thank Anil Kalhan, Jordan Fischer, and the organizers of the Drexel Uni- versity Earle Mack School of Law’s Building Global Professionalism Symposium, as well as the editorial staff of the Drexel Law Review. 1. This observation does not hold across all social science disciplines. Sociologists, for ex- ample, have typically shown a greater willingness to consider legal content, beginning with the founder of sociology, Émile Durkheim. See, e.g., ROGER COTTERRELL, ÉMILE DURKHEIM: LAW IN A MORAL DOMAIN 44 (1999). Legal practitioners in turn are not unwilling to use social