Law and Sociology in the Control of Small Groups

Abstract

G EORG Simmel has written: Any science selects from the totality of immediately experienced phenomena one series or one aspect under guidance of a certain concept; sociology is thus justified in dissecting the individual 'Existenzen' and bringing them together again according to its own concept by thus asking: according to what 'laws' do human beings move, in so far as they form, by interaction, groups, and in so far as they are determined by this existence in groups?' Simmel's comment would apply equally well to a study of the legal organization of small groups. He speaks of the laws of science and also of social science. What is legal law as compared to the laws of nature or the laws of social science? Laws are rules of ordering of phenomena which explain their nature or operation. In physical science, a law is a constant. No matter how many times the phenomena occur the law remains the same and explains the occurrences. Advances in scientific knowledge, however, may result in modifications of the laws. But the new formulations must be more suitable in explaining the phenomena. In short, consistency and constancy characterize laws of science. Laws of social science are much more of an approximation. The precision of natural science cannot be achieved because of two factors, history and legal law. Society in time and space does not change with the uniformity or regularity of the physical sciences. The changes, in differing environments, of groups of all sorts-families, tribes, nations, and so onconstitute their history. Social science can only describe, analyse, or synthesize such groups at a given time in a given place. Simultaneously, society has an ordering of its own, the rules of which are called law. In primitive society, the patterns of folkways, mores, and taboos were generally ritualized and formalized into tribal law.2 In time, these were superseded in some societies by written law.3 Codes appeared.4 Ancient Rome even developed a systematic jurisprudence which later became the