Law can be looked at from both an internal legal perspective - reflected in the official discourse supporting legal decisions - and an external perspective - which is pursued by studies that look at the law from the outside as the subject of sociological, economic, or philosophical analysis. This external dimension - related to extra-legal factors that impact the law, such as the institutional environment in which the law is applied - is usually ignored, or not addressed systematically by studies that focus on the internal perspective. By systematically internalizing these 'external' elements...