Original scientific paper
Sociology and Modern Law
Ivan Padjen
; Pravni fakultet, Rijeka
Abstract
The acquiescence of academic sociology to established social and political orders is explicable not only by extra-theoretical circumstances, but also by the fact that sociology as an intellectual activity presupposes categories of modern law and, moreover, relies on identifications of social reality provided by legal science, which revolves around the idea of order. This is true even of the mainstream — largely positivist — sociology in the 19th century, which emerged as a morally inspired reaction against the new social and political order constituted by modern law: the very reaction implied the recognition of that order as a prevailing or, at least, an important social fact. Thus the unit- ideas of the 19th century sociology refer either to non-legal institutions which were supposed to have a greater potential than their legal counterparts (community vs. society; authority vs. power; »sacred« vs. secular) or to social consequences of legal institutions (property —► alienation; equality —► status). Marx’s theory, which attempted to demonstrate both the relative unimportance of legal institutions and the inadequacy of jurisprudential analysis, probably owes more to jurisprudential identifications of social reality than it is commonly assumed. In contrast to the mainstream sociology, which has at least attempted to change the view of social reality by amending (or radically revising) jurisprudential identifications, interpretative sociology has wholly accepted them, thus acquiescing to the role of ancilla jurisprudentiae.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
155708
URI
Publication date:
31.12.1987.
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