ABSTRACT
The different patterns of recruitment into law and into sociology and the different experiences of students and practitioners in both milieus are critical factors bearing on the relation between the fields. Sociologists have often operated with an image of lawyers as men concerned with sanctions, with the enforcement of rules. Intellectual craftsmanship in the law, moreover, is a fairly visible and surprisingly unidimensional thing, so that law professors can evaluate each other’s competence rather readily, as mathematicians are said to be able to do, or organic chemists. In a law school or other legal environment sociologists, their intellectual allies are, of course, newcomers, and they often seek to behave in a way that will impress the lawyers. The law students, as a whole, feel even less free to take social science too seriously, for they are still seeking sanctuary. A teacher who reminds them too much of an undergraduate social science instructor may threaten the still unformed crust of vocationalism.
