Sociology of Law as an Independent Legal Discipline

Essay on the topic: "Sociology of law as an independent legal discipline"

It's been a hundred years since one of the classics of the world science, Emil Durkheim, differentiating the main directions of sociological knowledge, has identified a direction such as the sociology of law. Officially, the sociology of law was recognized by the branch of scientific knowledge only in 1962 at the Fifth International Sociological Congress, but the question of its nature, object, subject and place among other sciences is still debatable. In particular, among sociologists, the view dominates that the sociology of law is a sociological discipline.

Some authors among lawyers treat the sociology of law as a legal science, inextricably linked with the theory of law. Others, highlighting the theoretical and empirical sociology of law, refer the first to the general theory of law, and the latter is regarded as an independent direction of research within the framework of jurisprudence in general. They also express the opinion that the sociology of law is an independent legal science in the Russian social science.

In the theory of law, the legal approach to law, its role as a regulator of social relations, dominates. The legal approach to the legal regulation mechanism as a combination of legal means, the source of which is the state, called not only to create the right, but also to ensure its implementation in specific legal relations by the right of application and the right of execution, is one-sided. In this mechanism, law is represented by legal phenomena and processes, whereas in real life it is closely related to society, all its components - economy, politics, ideology, culture, social sphere, morality.

 The sources and final results of the law are known to be beyond its limits. As a regulator of social relations, the right is called upon to ensure a stable legal order in the society, create the conditions necessary for the active social activity of every person and the satisfaction of his needs. The social value of law is seen not in that it exists, but in its ability to guarantee society and every lawfully acting subject the achievement of socially significant results, which are fixed and protected by law.

 "The center of gravity of the development of law," wrote E. Erlich at the beginning of the 20th century, substantiating the subject of the sociology of law, "in our time, as in all times," not in law, in jurisprudence, or in judicial practice, but in Society itself "[6, c. 6].

Law as one of the social regulators has its object of social relations, that is, the phenomenon of social, rather than legal order. And the content of the rule of law, as is known, is determined by the legislator not at random, but on the basis of cognition and consolidation of stable, most important qualities, signs of social relations regulated by this norm. The influence of social phenomena on law is most clearly seen at the level of the needs and interests of individual social groups, individuals. It follows that the legislator, wishing to create an effective law, should focus, first of all, on the objective needs of society and the urgent needs of the subjects of legal relations.

An objective reason for isolating such a special field of knowledge as the sociology of law was that law is an important not only political and legal but also a social institution that has the most important role in social control and social regulation. Legal phenomena and processes can not be deeply and comprehensively studied outside of their connection with society as a social system, that is, outside of social ties.

The interrelation of sociology and jurisprudence in science until recently was largely one-sided. Legal science tried to adopt a sociological conceptual apparatus for solving its particular problems, but sociologists, as a rule, were almost not interested in the achievements of legal thought. However, legal science is interested not only in the social conditioning of law and its social action in a broader context, it needs to know the social meaning of specific legal institutions and norms, the suitability of public needs, the effectiveness of their actions [1, 79]. Therefore, on the basis of socio-philosophical positions in the unity of theoretical and empirical (specifically sociological) analysis, special sociological theories of law are being developed that explain the more particular patterns of development and functioning of the legal system and all its levels. As a result, a detailed knowledge of the law of law is achieved, in which the sociological theory of the sociological mechanism of the operation of law in its entirety and concreteness helps the legal science.

The sociology of law as a specifically defined component of jurisprudence was historically and methodologically born and formed within the framework of legal science and practice. It was precisely in the struggle against the concepts of legal positivism that sociological and legal approach emerged and developed on the basis of sociological positivism, which focused on the study of law primarily as a self-sufficient dynamic socio-legal phenomenon of the objective world, "law in life," the disclosure of interaction and interference of domain-specific The study of the law of factors that are covered by the fields of research of other sciences, for solving purely legal problems [2, 17].

Sociology of law from the primacy of social relations over legal relations and the legal norm. The nature of social relations determines both the system of legal norms, and the degree of their violation (compliance), and the "form" of society's response to the offense. In contrast to the legal approach (legal norms - judicial practice), the sociological seeks to reveal more in-depth connections that reflect the essence of legal phenomena: social relations - the right - the functioning of legal norms in society - their social effectiveness.

Law is a relatively independent phenomenon. And in this sense it is the subject of legal science, the right is the side of society, and therefore it is the subject of the sociology of law [3; P.7]. Since the right is generated by society, then all legal phenomena to a certain extent are social. However, the reverse would be wrong: not every social phenomenon is legal. There is no legal social, for example, what is called custom.

The sociology of law focuses on the study of the social functions of law, the consequences associated with the adoption and introduction into public life of legal actions [5, 109]. Thus, the sociology of law provides for the study of legal phenomena in three main directions.

The first direction of the study covers the study of those features of socio-economic living conditions that require a legal settlement of public relations in criminal, civil, administrative and other forms. All legal institutions and norms acquire their material substantiation here.

The second direction covers the study of social, socio-psychological and legal mechanisms of the operation of legal norms. The study of social and socio-psychological mechanisms involves studying relevant factors that affect the implementation of legal norms and the construction of a set of behavioral models that allow us to examine the cumulative effect of all these socially and legally significant factors [1; C. 256].