First Page
111
Abstract
The Anglo-American lawyer is inclined to restrain his interest to the legal order; he becomes a specialist in the decisions rendered by the courts. The attorney, unfamiliar with present day methodology of the social sciences, is easily bewildered by the writings and judicial decisions of the sociological jurist. Part of this bewilderment may be at once eliminated by distinguishing two concepts of "law." The lawyer may conceive of the law as "that which is backed by the force of politically organized society." An inadequate amount of attention is directed toward the sources of law, its trends and its functions. Sociologists have a different meaning, and emphasize the functional phase of law. It is, they say, an institution of social control, an instrument in ordering human conduct. For its survival and betterment society uses law to control the individual.
Recommended Citation
Glynn A. Pugh,
Sociology of Law--A Student's Concept,
1 Vanderbilt Law Review
111
(1947)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol1/iss1/16