Sabine Frerichs

Post-doctoral Researcher

Tel. [+358] 9 191 23823

Working languages: German, English, French, Finnish

Curriculum Vitae

Since 2012 Assistant Professor and Docent of Legal Sociology at the University of Helsinki. In 2012 Academy-of-Finland Fellow at the European University Institute. Since 2008 Member of the Centre of Excellence “Foundations of European Law and Polity” at the University of Helsinki. 2007 Doctor of Social Sciences (Dr. rer. pol.). Dissertation awards by the German Sociological Association and the University of Bamberg (“Judicial Governance in der europäischen Rechtsgemeinschaft”, Nomos 2008). Studies of sociology, economics, and political science at the University of Trier, Germany. Postgraduate studies in the Research Training Group “Markets and Social Systems in Europe” at the University of Bamberg, Germany. 2007 Doctor of Social Sciences (Dr. rer. pol.). Dissertation awards by the German Sociological Association and the University of Bamberg (“Judicial Governance in der europäischen Rechtsgemeinschaft”, Nomos 2008).

Research area

Main field of activities: Sociological theory, sociology of law, economic sociology.

“Le droit c’est la main de la société pesant sur l’individu, et où celle-ci cesse de se faire sentir, il n’y a plus de droit.” (Durkheim)

Law’s Great Transformation: My take on the overall project is a sociological one. If the law is the hand of society, one has to go beyond, or behind, both the ‘invisible hand’ of the market and the ‘visible hand’ of the (regulatory) state, and situate the respective ideal types of private law in the context of a society which defines, or circumscribes, its form and function. The transformation of (European) private law from one form/function to another say, from autonomy to regulation can be reflected in terms of the trajectories of the “market society” (Polanyi) since its beginnings in “nineteenth century civilisation”, and the accompanying tension between market-enabling and market-restricting types of law. Thus understood, European regulatory private law is but an instance of “law’s great transformation”.

The Law of the Market Society: Conflicts and Dynamics [draft; final version to be published in Joerges, Christian; Falke, Josef (eds.): The Conflicts-Law Approach on Trial. Hart Publishing]