A Critique of Economic and Sociological Theories of Social Control (original) (raw)

Subverting Orthodoxy, Making Law Central: A View of Sociolegal Studies

Journal of Law and Society, 2002

The promise of sociolegal research varies for different constituencies. For some legal scholars it has been a promise of sustained commitment to moral and political critique of law and to theoretical and empirical analysis of law's social consequences and origins. To continue to deliver on that promise today, sociolegal studies should develop theory in new forms emphasizing the variety of forms of regulation and the moral foundations on which that regulation ultimately depends. It should demonstrate and explore law's roles in the routine structuring of all aspects of social life and its changing character as it faces the challenge of regulating relations of community not bounded solely by the jurisdictional reach of nation states.

The Force of Law as a Social Problem

US-China Law Review, 2017

In this paper, the author aims to respond to the urgings in the book “The Force of Law” by Frederick Schauer breaking from the paradigm of analytical jurisprudence, insofar as the University of Virginia philosopher states having found sociological bases for his own logical/reconstructive architecture. The author, on the one hand, intend to develop a critique of Schauer’s approach that is not merely theoretical, but sociological as well; on another hand, Hart’s thesis on force in law—strongly criticized by contemporary analytical philosophers—is not therefore rebuffed by sociological analysis but somehow finds confirmation. In a nutshell, whether the use of force is sociologically necessary to control isolated resistance to the rules shared by the majority, or to reinforce a law, that aims to trigger necessary social change, but such a strong limitation of human freedom must be justified; and this legitimacy can only derive from the need for Justice.

Rule of Law in Legal and Economic Theory

1993

It is one of the curiosities of the academic world that one dimension of human experience will sometimes be investigated from multiple disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological perspectives. This is clearly the case with legal theory, which has grown out of traditional studies of the law as a means of bringing more coherence and order to those studies. But law must also be one of the important features of human societies to be investigated by the comparatively young social sciences. While empirical social science has struggled through a troubled infancy and childhood, one has to hope that it will someday mature to the point that it can deal with law in a way that does not oversimplify or compromise the centuries of insight that have accumulated in more isolated legal studies. And once that happens, a much broader platform of understanding of human action may facilitate important new understandings of law and legal systems. In this paper I will show how recent developments in economic and sociological theory may facilitate some expanded union of analytic philosophy of law with the empirical social sciences, a union which, in turn, may bring important new understanding of the rule of law. As I have explored the implications for our understanding of rule of law elsewhere, 1 the present essay will document the reluctance of leading legal positivists to make strong connections to the social sciences and will describe the developments in the social sciences, inspired principally by economics and rational choice theory, which make such a union more promising at this time.

Law and Human Nature: The Social-Adaptive Function of the Normative Behavior

The objective of this article is to offer a critical (re)interpretation of genesis and evolution, object and purpose, as well as useful qualified methods for interpreting, justifying and applying modern practical law, all with the intention of putting philosophic thought and contemporary formal theory of reason at the service of hermeutics and juridical argumentation. Law is no more-no less-than an social-adaptive strategy, evermore complex, but always noticeably deficient, used to articulate argumentatively-in fact, not always with justicethrough the virtue of prudence, elementary relational social ties through which men construct approved styles of interaction and social structure, i.e., to organize and ethically improve political and social life in such a way as to permit that no free citizen-rich or poor-should fear the arbitrary interference of other social actors in his life plan.

Law without the State LEGAL ATTRIBUTES AND THE COORDINATION OF DECENTRALIZED COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT

Most social scientists take for granted that law is defined by the presence of a centralized authority capable of exacting coercive penalties for violations of legal rules. Moreover, the existing approach to analyzing law in economics and positive political theory works with a very thin concept of law that does not account for the distinctive attributes of legal order as compared with other forms of social order. Drawing on a model developed elsewhere, we reinterpret key case studies to demonstrate how a theoretically informed approach illuminates questions about the emergence, stability, and function of law in supporting economic and democratic growth.

Law as a sociological phenomenon

In order for us to address law as a sociological phenomenon that is merely an unmitigated coercive regime bereft of moral normativity, we must first seek to define the concept law after which I will be discussing the views of the two schools of thought; which are the Legal Positivists and the Naturalists. It is by through these two schools of thought that I will provide relevant information on the basis of the topic statement.