United States

Origin of Law and Society Activities in the United States

Interest in the interaction of the legal and social has its roots far back in human history. Contemporary American sociolegal scholars look to classical Greeks, such as Plato (c. 427–347 BCE); European social philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as John Locke (1632–1704); and early students of American society, such as Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859). Sociolegal scholars also study the founding fathers of sociology—Karl Marx (1818–1883), Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), and Max Weber (1864–1920)—for inspiration and insight. Among jurisprudential traditions, contemporary sociolegal scholarship draws from utilitarianism, the cultural and historical schools of jurisprudence, and sociological jurisprudence and legal realism, which emerged during the early decades of the 20th century.

As American social science developed, questions about law and legal institutions inevitably arose, but a specific focus on the interaction of the legal and social was not central. Within sociology, criminology emerged at an early stage as a major subspecialty, and today, there are far more criminologists than sociolegal scholars (and journals). From the outset, the meaning of law in preliterate cultures was of interest to some prominent cultural anthropologists, with Adamson Hoebel (1925–1983) as one American representative of this tradition. Over time, specialized interests in law emerged in other disciplines, such as economics, political science, and psychology. Within the humanities—including history, philosophy, and literary studies—a small minority of scholars focused specifically on law in relation to the broader framework of their discipline.

Although some scholars completed significant sociolegal work in the years immediately after World [Page 1535]War II, most recognize that the conscious emergence of a law and society movement took place in the 1960s. The establishment of the Law and Society Association in 1964 marks the formal beginning of such activities as a multidisciplinary enterprise in the United States. The organization provided a refuge for scholars in law schools who had long felt marginalized in that setting due to their interest in sociolegal phenomena. Some of the most influential figures in the law and society movement reported being bored in law school by the formalist, doctrinal analysis that was dominant during their time as law students. They had consciously sought to bring disciplines such as history and sociology into law school faculties and into legal scholarship.

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