‘By your powers combined’: the elucidatory role of comparative socio-legal research

In 2021 I argued that a key role of comparative socio-legal research is that of priming. In that article the case made that comparative socio-legal approaches allow us more readily ‘to recognise the projection of localisms onto global forms, to identify the irritants provoking incremental moves and changes, [and] to note the unexpectedly and even controversially normative within and across different arenas”. This readying role of comparative socio-legal scholarship is often overlooked but the nuanced contextual foundation it provides is of critical importance, not least in how it facilitates the maintenance of its conceptual insights through and into real-world investigation and application. Aim in this chapter is to show, through the case study of Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction for Indian tribes under the US 2013 Violence Against Women legislation, how the respective powers of socio-legal studies and comparative law combine to fulfil this key priming role. Attention is drawn to the ways in which comparative socio-legal scholarship is able to identify and explain inter alia the hybridisation of practices, the fortitude of socio-structural frameworks, and the bottom-up dynamics of norm production.