Sociology of Law in Germany

Abstract

Sociological perspectives in the study of law have a long history in German scholarship. As early as the beginning of the nineteenth century the “Historical School of Jurisprudence” had insisted that the law is embedded in the developing patterns of social and cultural life, and that this aspect should guide the analysis of law as well as govern legislation. Still, it was only during the decades before and after 1900 that more specifically sociological analyses began to appear. German jurisprudence was not characterized by close contact and intimate interaction with social and economic reality. Among the reasons for this were the following: (1)the coexistence of regionally fragmented and relatively traditional legal practice with legal scholarship shaped by the tradition of Roman law;(2)the relative segregation of legal personnel by class and subculture from people without a university education and from business and enterprise; and(3)the dominant role of government bureaucracies, staffed mainly by lawyers, which in many instances did not have to be particularly responsive to the demands of new groups with interests in the law.