2.3 Sociological School of Law

Core claim: law is a social phenomenon and instrument — to be studied empirically (its causes and effects) and guided normatively (its social purposes); "law in action" over "law in books." Exponents: Rudolf von Jhering — the bridge figure: law is "the sum of the conditions of social life… secured by the power of the State" — law as means to social ends; purpose (Zweck) over form. Eugen Ehrlich — the "living law": the norms actually governing daily life (associations, guilds, villages) against the state's "law in books"; jurisprudence must study the living law. Émile Durkheim — law as the visible symbol of solidarity; repressive→restitutive with mechanical→organic solidarity. Léon Duguit — law grounded in social solidarity (the objective law society needs) against metaphysical rights; the state itself under the social norm. Roscoe Pound — the dean of the school: sociological jurisprudence; law as social engineering, balancing individual, public and social interests; "law in books vs law in action"; the call for courts and lawyers to study what rules do. The law-and-society movement (from the 1960s) and today's empirical legal studies are the school's research programme — law and economics is its economic grandchild. Contribution: brought facts into the temple — disputing behaviour, the legal profession, institutional effects, gap studies (the gap between enacted law and lived law — Nepal's under-…