3.4 Sociological School

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 (Sociology Unit 3's founding text).• Émile Durkheim — law as the visible symbol of solidarity; repressive→restitutive with mechanical→organic solidarity (Sociology Unit 3.3.1's full treatment — revise it).• 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 socialengineering, balancing individual, public and social interests; "law in books vs law in action" the call for courts and lawyers to study what rules do (again, Sociology Unit 3.3.4).• The law-and-society movement (from the 1960s) and today's empirical legal studies are the school's research programme — and your Economics-II Unit 6 (law and economics) is its economic grandchild.Contribution: brought facts into the temple — disputing behaviour,…