塔玛纳哈是当代美国社会-法律研究领域的领军人物之一，其研究涉及社会与法律理论、司法裁判理论、法治、一般法理学等法理学的主要命题。其理论体系以实用主义为哲学基础，以社会-法律为研究进路，旨在建立适应全球化背景下超越后现代主义法学的新法律现实主义。　　塔玛纳哈将社会-法律研究命名为“社会法律理论”，并试图改变其在法理学中的边缘状况，主张将之作为与法律实证主义、自然法并列的法理学“第三支柱”。在塔玛纳哈的社会法律理论中，因袭主义进路的法律概念和非本质主义的法律多元概念，解决了这一领域难以达成共识的基本概念问题。　　塔玛纳哈的现实主义社会-法律理论，援引实用主义哲学，以后现代反基础主义为基本语境，运用行为主义和阐释主义作为其方法论基础，主张将法律的两种研究进路即概念分析与社会-法律研究相结合，借鉴社会科学的研究成果以创新法律理论，为社会-法律研究提供了一种新的类型。　　美国司法裁判理论是美国法理学的核心问题，塔玛纳哈对传统的理论进行了全面的批判。塔玛纳哈不仅否认在美国历史上存在法律形式主义时期，而且试图纠正将法律现实主义归结为极端规则怀疑主义的传统认识。他提出贯穿美国法律史的是一种均衡现实主义，既强调规则制约一面，也不忽视规则怀疑一面，同时又不夸大规则怀疑对司法裁判的影响，从而对美国司法裁判理论进行了重构。　　塔玛纳哈对于法治理论也进行了全面的重构。他提出了最小法治概念、将各种法治理论纳入其形式法治与实质法治的分类框架中，认为法治先于自由主义产生，并且与社会福利国家是相容的，政府受法律限制、形式合法性、法律之治而非人治是法治中最重要的三个主题，进而将法治重构为一个能够包容当下不同法治实践与法治理论的动态体系。　　塔玛纳哈的理论研究暗含着复兴一般法理学理想的主线，目标是构建一个可适用于所有制度、所有情形的理论框架。从塔玛纳哈现有的理论来看，已为其一般法理学意义下的社会法律理论构建了基本框架。　　塔玛纳哈独特的非西方法律中心主义的研究视角，使其能够跳出美国法理学研究的常规束缚，观察并包容不同的法律文化，对于全球化法律理论的创新提供了一种非常有价值的研究范式。

　　Tamanaha is one of the leaders in the area of contemporary American socio-legal study. His researches involve main topics such as social and legal theory, theory on judicial decisions, rule of law, general jurisprudence, and so on. His theory system is based on the philosophy of pragmatism, takes a socio-legal research approach, which aims to build a new legal realism beyond postmodern jurisprudence under the background of globalization.　　Tamanaha gives social-legal research area a unified name of “social legal theory” and is trying to change its marginal status in jurisprudence. He advocates to establish it as the third pillar parallelling with legal positivism and natural law. In Tamanaha’s social legal theory, the concept of law with conventionalism approach and the concept of non-essential legal pluralism, solve the problem of failing to reach a consensus on basic concepts within this area.　　Tamanaha’s realistic social-legal theory quotes philosophical pragmatism, takes anti-fundamentalism as the basic context, and adopts bahaviourism and interpretivism as its methodological foundation. Tamanaha proposes to combine the two kinds of research approaches which are conceptual analysis and socio-legal theory. He is trying to innovate legal theory by virtue of the insights of social science theories. His theory provides a new approach for social-legal research.　　The theory on judicial decisions is one of the core topics of American jurisprudence. Tamanaha criticizes traditional theory comprehensively. He denies the existence of legal formalism as a period in American legal history, and he tries to change the traditional understanding about the legal realism as extreme rule skepticism. On this basis, he puts forward to a theory of balanced realism which takes the rule-bound and rule-skeptical as two basic points. He is not only trying to reshape the image of legal realism, but to reconstruct the theory on judicial decisions.　　Tamanaha also carries out the comprehensive reconstruction to the theory of rule of law. He proposes the concept of the minimal rule of law, incorporates various theories about the rule of law into his classified framework including the formal types of rule of law and the substantive types of rule of law. He argues that the tradition of rule of law generated prior to liberalism and is compatible with the social welfare state. He considers that government limited by law, formal legality, and rule of law, not man, are the most important three themes in the rule of law, and reconstructs the rule of law as a dynamic system that could be inclusive of different practices and theories about the rule of law. 　　There is a consistent thread running through all the above Tamanaha’s theoretical study: the ideal of the renaissance of general jurisprudence. It is aiming to build a theoretical framework which could be able to apply to all systems and all situations. Considering his existing theories, Tamanaha has succeeded to construct a basic framework for social legal theory under the context of general jurisprudence.　　Tamanaha’s unique non-western-law-centric research perspective allows him to jump out conventional bondage for the American jurisprudence research, observe and accommodate different legal culture, and provide a new valuable research paradigm for the innovation of legal theory.