ABSTRACT
Weber (1864-1920) and Pound (1870-1964) pioneered the analytical, systematic approach to jurisprudence. Law was to be studied as a social institution and the legal order would be investigated in its setting in relation to other social phenomena. A sociological review of law would be undertaken. Weber, a German jurist, economist and sociologist, evolved a synoptic view of legal development which he interpreted as characterised by systematic changes in the legal order and in the growth of authority. Sociology was, for Weber, a comprehensive, wide-ranging science of social action. Pound, Dean of the Harvard Law School, enunciated the aim of law as the balancing of the security of society and the individual life. To this end he wished to construct a ‘theory of social interests which courts may use, just as in the past they have used the scheme of individual interests which we call theories of natural rights’. He attempted to make an inventory and classification of interests, believing that such a systematisation was necessary if interests were to be balanced correctly.
