The Sociology of Law: A Suitable Case for Treatment

Abstract

Social theories give rise to definite social practices. The distinguishing feature of contemporary legal theory is the demand for a dialogue between the respective areas and methods of vision embraced by the jurist and by that particular brand of social philosopher, the sociologist. Two overriding causes define the urgency with which this quest is currently espoused. Firstly, and perhaps the less convincing, is that jurists feel acutely aware that an intellectual industry which has by tradition assumed the form of a monopoly is rapidly being annexed by the imperialist ambitions of academic sociology. But sociology neither does nor pretends to exhibit a unified front. Indeed a ‘mainstream’ sociology cannot now be said to exist, even in the limited sense which it did in the 1940s. and 1950s when dominated by normative functionalism. Although the functionalism of Parsons and his followers was the dominant sociological paradigm between 1937 and the events of the mid-1960s, even functionalism had major rivals in symbolic interactionism and the ‘mindless empiricism’ which C. Wright Mills ridiculed. Sociological theory now consists of a veritable plethora of competing epistemologies.

Whoever opts for the path of legal reform, in place of and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power, actually chooses not a calmer and slower road to the same aim, but a different aim altogether.

Rosa Luxemburg