Timasheff, Nicholas S. (1886–1970)

Nicholas S. Timasheff, one of the founders of modern sociology of law, wrote the important Introduction to the Sociology of Law (1939). Timasheff published most of his writings on sociolegal matters during the 1930s and 1940s. After Eugen Ehrlich (1862–1922) in Vienna, Timasheff was likely the second scholar to teach sociology of law as a subject (at the University of St. Petersburg).

In 1932, Timasheff began a correspondence with fellow Russian émigré Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968) on the latter's monumental four-volume treatise, Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937–1941). At Sorokin's invitation, Timasheff moved to the United States in 1936 and lectured for several years at Harvard University on the sociology of law. In 1940, Timasheff joined the faculty of arts and sciences at Fordham University, where he taught courses in sociology of law, criminology, and Russian constitutions.

Introduction is a sophisticated treatise that explains, precisely and methodically, law's efficacy as a social force by analyzing law as a combination of socioethical coordination and imperative coordination of behavior. Timasheff's characterization of law as ethico-imperative coordination brought together the spheres of power and ethics.

Timasheff contended that power supported law. Power, or the imperative coordination of behavior, entails an “external excitation,” such as the act of the dominator, either through imperative words or gestures or through physical force. Social power requires organized active power centers as well as a complex of interrelated individuals as necessary conditions for the law's externalization and objectivity. This objectivity results from the fact that individuals have a tendency to reify transpersonal hierarchical power structures. On the other hand, Timasheff contended that law possesses an ethical-normative element. An ethical system involves custom and morals. Large numbers of citizens must see most legal rules as conducive to the common good if the ethical substructure of law is to survive.

In Introduction, Timasheff located law's fluidity in the realm of the collective ethical ought. This “oughtness,” which binds individual consciousness into collective consciousness, and is found in law, pervades his legal sociology. It is perhaps nowhere more evident than in his concept of the self-limitation of power. According to Timasheff, a true legal order is possible to the extent that the political state rules by restraint. Only in such a situation does the real union of ethics and power—ethicized power—constitute law.

In sum, for Timasheff, law is ethical because every legal behavior can be expressed in a proposition with the predicate ought to be. At the same time, law is also imperative because its ought to be is enforced by a centralized power structure, a government.