ABSTRACT
[p. 172] In this article we propose to extract certain mechanisms common to moral facts and legal facts, as well as certain differences or contrasts between them. The problem of the relationship between law and morality gets taken up over and over again, either from the point of view of practical delimitations (in particular among jurists, for whom the question of boundaries arises daily) or from the point of view of the philosophy of law or moral philosophy. But it is undoubtedly also interesting to pure sociology. It is to this sociological terrain that we will restrict ourselves, but the special and well delimited formulation of the questions perhaps calls for some preliminary explication for the reader for whom the jurisconsult’s or the moralist’s or the philosopher’s habits of thought would draw him far away from that specific to a sociologist. The sociologist must explain sociological facts as facts, while constraining himself constantly not to evaluate them, even from the standpoint of his own metaphysical system.
