ABSTRACT
The classical sociologists and law 19 Marx 20 Durkheim 23 Weber 24
Sociological jurisprudence 25 Savigny 26 Sumner 27 Petrazycki 28 Erhlich 29
The American realist tradition 29 Holmes 30 Pound 30 Llewellyn 31
The relevance of the classical tradition 32 From classical to contemporary sociology 32 Debates about method 33 The legacy of sociological jurisprudence 35
Questions 36
Further reading 36
Boxes 2.1 Marx’s base-superstructure model 22 2.2 Llewellyn on the law school 32 2.3 Weber on regulation 34
The most difficult and least inviting part of introductory courses in any academic discipline is often the obligatory introduction to classical thinkers. This is, firstly, because the original writings are hard to follow, often simply because they were written in a different historical period. It requires some effort to obtain sufficient background on the political events and intellectual debates that made them interesting at the time. In my experience, students usually find no difficulty in summarising particular thinkers using the many helpful textbook accounts that have been published (for example, Adams and Sydie 2002). What they are often unable to do is make the imaginative leap that enables one to see that the ideas continue to be relevant to the problems and challenges we face today.
