The fundamental concepts of justice and power provide points of departure for leading scholars to explore the various domains of sociolegal research. As they note the explicitness of the engagement with issues of power and the relative silence about--or indirectness in taking on--questions of justice found in most law and society research, they ask how engagement with issues of power and silence about justice constituted law and society as a research field caught between a desire to have political impact and, at the same time, to maintain its scientific respectability.About the Author: Bryant G. Garth is director of the American Bar Foundation. Austin Sarat is the Oliver Wendell Holmes Professor of Law and Jurisprudence at Amherst College.