Austria

The contribution of Austrian lawyers and scholars in establishing a specific tradition of social reasoning within jurisprudence is unquestionable. It includes, in particular, famous names such as Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909), Eugen Ehrlich (1862–1922), and Anton Menger (1841–1906). Their activity marks a general concern spreading in most European countries at the end of the nineteenth century about the insularity of formalism that was, up to then, the hallmark of the legal world.

As their principal aim, these scholars undertook to overcome narrow-minded and dogmatic thinking in the theory and practice of law and to make the legal system and legal culture suitable to the requirements of a modern industrial world. This endeavor of modernizing law triggered fundamental and fierce debates about the concept of law, often called the “battle for law,” which happened in continental Europe nearly simultaneously with the emergence of American legal realism and sociological jurisprudence.

These modernizing trends favoring the rise of social science in general and legal sociology in particular came to an abrupt standstill, however, with the takeover of fascism and National Socialism in Austria. Adherents to social jurisprudence had to stop their work or even to leave the country. An example of the latter was Hans Zeisel (1905–1992), a famous participant in the epochal study Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (Jobless of Marienthal, 1933), conducted together with Marie Jahoda (1907–2001) and Paul Lazarsfeld (1901–1976). In 1938, at the Nazi takeover, Zeisel emigrated to the United States and later became professor of statistics, law, and sociology at Columbia University. As such, he wielded authoritative influence on the development of legal sociology in both Austria and the United States.

In the postwar period, the main obstacle to further spread of societal approaches and methods in the legal sciences was the sustained dominance of the Vienna school of law and the special weight of its most prominent representative, Hans Kelsen (1881–1973). He was a formidable Austrian jurist and philosopher and the author of Reine Rechtslehre (Pure Theory of Law, 1934). With this legal purism, one could explain law exclusively by nomological structures. On the other hand, extralegal factors—economic, political, or social—were strictly banned. This attitude toward law as a body of autonomous rules had long dominated legal practice and teaching.

Jurists experienced the confrontation with sociological approaches, beginning in the 1960s, as a paradigmatic struggle between conservatives and reformists. The influence of purism and the attachment to strict dogmatic decision making began to recede in the 1970s. From then on, law faculties began to include sociological subjects in their curricula, initiating a socialization process that led in the end to gradual change. Judges and officials based more and more decisions in courts and administrative agencies on the assessment of interests instead of formal rules. There was no real integration of social and legal sciences, which the early reformists wanted, but a quiet change in the everyday practice of law.

Accordingly, there are only a small number of separate and specialized institutions for sociolegal research. Perhaps it is the Austrian way to prefer a combination with traditional subjects, for instance with civil, penal, or labor law, or with philosophy. The Vienna Institute for Legal and Criminal Sociology [Page 110](IRKS) is such an institution and publishes, for example, the Yearbook for Legal and Criminal Sociology and provides policy assistance.

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