Saturday, August 16, 2008

Sociology of law

Sociology of law is a diverse field of study that examines the interaction of law with society. Sociology of law overlaps with jurisprudence, economic analysis of law and more specialised subjects such as criminology.The institutions of law and the social construction of legal issues and systems are relevant areas of inquiry. Initially, legal theorists were suspicious of the discipline. Kelsen attacked one of its founders, Eugen Ehrlich, who wanted to emphasise the difference between positive law, which lawyers learn and apply, and other forms of 'law' or social norms that regulate everyday life, generally preventing conflicts from reaching lawyers and courts. Around 1900 Max Weber defined his "scientific" approach to law, identifying the "legal rational form" as a type of domination, not attributable to people but to abstract norms.Legal rationalism was his term for a body of coherent and calculable law which formed a precondition for modern political developments and the modern bureaucratic state and developed in parallel with the growth of capitalism. Another sociologist, Émile Durkheim, wrote in The Division of Labour in Society that as society becomes more complex, the body of civil law concerned primarily with restitution and compensation grows at the expense of criminal laws and penal sanctions.Other notable early legal sociologists included Hugo Sinzheimer, Theodor Geiger, Georges Gurvitch and Leon Petrażycki in Europe, and William Graham Sumner in the U.S.

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