The Concept of Jurisprudence*

Abstract. The first part of this article contains (i) considerations as to the relationship between jurisprudence and legal dogmatics, legal philosophy, and sociology of law; (ii) considerations about the status of jurisprudence both as a meta- and an object-theory. These lead to the suggestion that jurisprudence should be defined as a general juristic theory of law and legal science. In the second part, the character and elements of this definition are explained systematically. The article's main thesis is that jurisprudence is not distinguished from legal philosophy and sociology of law by its subject or its method, but by the specifically juristic research aspect or perspective it is based upon.     

中国的法律社会学研究

中国的法律社会学研究自1980年代复兴以来,学者们建立起了法律社会学的基本理论框架,并结合社会实践开展了一系列研究,取得了较为丰硕的成果。法律社会学与社会学法学存在称谓之争,但近期研究以法律社会学的提法为主流。法律社会学的基本理论包括法律社会学的定义、研究对象、理论特征、研究框架、研究的意义等,学者们就此进行了深入探讨,对法律社会学的方法论更是投入了较多的精力。应当有重点地加强新时期的法律社会学研究。     

整合进路中的发展策略:伯克利学派的理论纲领——兼评《转变中的法律与社会:迈向回应型法》

伯克利学派是在工具主义思路和改革法制、解决社会问题的指向下探求一种规范主义的法社会学,力图超越自然法和法律实证主义的二元对立,重新整合法律、政治和社会的理论.伯克利学派的理论纲领主要沿着一种整合进路展开,其中所运用的发展策略对其法律理想类型的建构起着重要作用,但也存在自相矛盾:强调法律的"内在动力"而忽视外部条件;法律理想类型的构建与强烈的社会改革倾向之间呈现一种紧张,从而弱化了这一理论的有效性.     

Toward an integration of economic and sociological approaches?

This article answers the question whether sociology of law and law and economics can be unificd into one integrated science. First, it is argued that an integration process inside law and economics has taken place, integrating most schools and partial analyses into one mainstream law and economics. Second, it is argued that there are no natural barriers against an integration of sociology and economics. Purely economic theories cannot and do not exist. What is calledeconomic analysis of law is basically a mixture of, for instance, 70 percent economics, 10 percent sociology, 10 percent psychology, and 10 percent other sciences. In addition, there is no such a thing as a purely sociological concept; concepts are sociological only in the sense that they are invented by people who call themselves sociologists.Nevertheless one should not expect that such a richer social science will lead to fundamentally different predictions and policy recommendations than those derived from the current simplistic economic analysis of law. The aspects studied by sociologists but assumed away by legal economists to date have in most cases no influence on the determination of (optimal) legal rules or on the long-run effects of legal rules.     

Law in Culture

Abstract. The relationship of law and culture has long been a concern of legal anthropology and sociology of law. But it is recognised today as a central issue in many different kinds of juristic inquiries. All these recent invocations of the concept of culture indicate or imply problems at the boundaries of established thought about either the nature of law or the values that law is thought to express or reflect. The consequence is that legal theory must, it seems, now systematically take account of the notion of culture. The present paper asks how this might best be done. I argue that a concept of culture, as such, is of limited utility for legal theory because the term “culture” embraces a too indefinite and disparate range of phenomena. But legal theory needs conceptual resources to consider at a general level the relations of law and culture. This paper suggests that these resources should include, above all, a rigorous distinguishing of different abstract types of community. Legal theory requires a sociologically‐informed concept of community. What is encompassed by the vague idea of culture is actually the content of different types of social relations of community and the networks (combinations) in which they exist.     

现代社会的法律自治——韦伯论现代法律的自治性

韦伯的社会学是作为包括法律科学在内的整个社会科学的基础而出现的,为我们理解法律现象提供了一个基于社会理论的＂外在视角＂。以韦伯的法律社会学为基础考察法律自治性的社会理论依据,可以为我们理解包括法律自治在内的现代法律现象提供一把钥匙。     

Law's Social Forms: A Powerless Approach to the Sociology of Law

Since the law and society movement in the 1960s, the sociology of law in the United States has been dominated by a power/inequality approach. Based on a sociological distinction between the forms and substances of law, this article outlines a “powerless” approach to the sociology of law as a theoretical alternative to the mainstream power/inequality approach. Following Simmel and the Chicago School of sociology, this new approach analyzes the legal system not by its power relations and patterns of inequality, but by its social forms, or the structures and processes that constitute the legal system's spatial outlook and temporality. Taking a radical stance on power, this article is not only a retrospective call for social theory in law and society research, but also a progressive effort to move beyond US‐centric sociolegal scholarship and to develop new social science tools that explain a larger variety of legal phenomena across the world.     

对“软法”概念的冷思考——兼谈对卢曼法社会学理论的正确理解

我国现当今理论界的软法探讨需要认真进行整理和反省。细加分析，软法所设定的诸多立论依据实际上是站不住脚的。而卢曼的社会学理论在此讨论中的引用多属一种“误用”，对其进行全面和准确的理解恰好会对软法的概念起到一种否定性的作用。因此，对这一问题以及与之相关问题的研究应当多结合法律、政治等诸系统的特性进行科学性分析。     

《道路交通安全法》第七十六条运行实效考察

《道路交通安全法》第七十六条关于交通事故处理的规定引起社会的强烈关注,其运行实效究竟如何?从法律运行实效的视角,运用法律社会学的法律实效理论的研究路径,根据法律实效评判的内在标准和外在标准,依托权威性的“社会事实”,兼采经验实证与逻辑推理的方法,揭示该七十六条的良好实效,展示该法律在实现社会控制中起到的积极作用,吁请人们树立正确的守法观念和守法意识,坚持依法办事,建构良好的法秩序。     

Comparative Sociology of Law: Legal Fields, Legal Scholarships, and Social Sciences in Europe and the United States

This article attempts to gain a better understanding of the sociology(ies) of law in a comparative perspective through a structural and comparative explanation of the American and the French legal fields. It is argued that comparative sociology of law will not be able to explain the difference among countries, scholars, movements, and schools of thought in short, it will not be able to compare—as long as it avoids the analysis of some social and cultural presuppositions related to the context in which these differences take place. It focuses mainly on two of these presuppositions. First, legal fields, with their history, their internal structure, and their power relations, and second the type of relation between the legal field and the state. The empirical examination provided in this article explicitly seeks to offer insights for the reconstruction of Bourdieu's structural theory of the legal field.     

The Commonality Between Economics and Law

The development of law and economics is a success story in the expansion of economics into other social sciences since the 1960s. The success has been attributed to the fact that economics offers a powerful set of analytical tools with a forceful theory of human behavior. But if this is the only reason, then the move of economics into other social sciences such as political science and sociology should have been equally successful. This, however, has not been true, and the discrepancy calls for an explanation. The commonalities between economics and law in both subject matter and analytical approach provide a more convincing explanation; some of the difficulties faced by the legal economists can also be explained by an appreciation of the commonalites between economics and law.     

Don’t Occupy This Movement: Thinking Law in Social Movements

Reflecting on the Occupy movement, particularly Occupy Wall Street, this article begins by addressing two major questions: how are social movements understood by legal academics; and how do social movements engage with law? Our aim is to present an alternative frame to understanding law and social movements. We draw on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy to explore law as both present and constituted in the coming together of persons in common which occurs in social movements. While the Occupy movement does engage with a form of law that is legislated and enacted through the government and legal system of a nation-state, the movement also forms and enacts law as part of its own processes. In this article we shift perspectives and attempt to think law within social movements. This involves a critical reading of some dominant approaches that explore social movements and law. Rather than situate our discussion within boundaries that seek to identify what is inside or outside a law and legal system that is determined and enforced by a nation-state (government and judicial system), our discussion of law involves a re-thinking of law. This law is part of a constant negotiation and it is involved in the dynamic processes of movements. Law involves establishing a limit and tracing this limit, but this limit is un-working itself as soon as it is constituted. The Occupy movements live law by existing not outside the law, but by rethinking the role and function of law in the movement and processes of community.     

法律的自治与开放——当代美国法社会学方法论变革导论

研究当代美国法社会学的方法论变革有助于揭示其知识增量,并可能为中国法社会学提供理论资源。方法论是指对方法的研究或理论分析,即把方法组织成一个体系并予以理论说明。由于一个学科的所有理论和方法论都围绕该学科的核心问题而组织,并通过继承与批判传统而逐步演进,因此方法论研究应揭示主导变化的核心线索和变化所蕴含的学术意义。法社会学的核心问题是法律与社会的关系。法社会学以社会学视角破除法学的法律自治观念,证明法律领域的开放性。当代美国法社会学通过方法论变革批判了"法律与社会"的模式,使法律与社会的关系以及法律的自治与开放获得新的解释。     

法理即法律原理之解说

自清末民初以来,将法理解说为法律原理就成为法学界的通例,但其界定方式则有四种:一是径直以法律原理定位法理;二是将法律原理、法律原则并列来定位法理;三是将法理视为由法律原理推导出的法律一般原则;四是认为法理是指法律原则,但包括法律原理在内。法理和法律原理的存在是一种客观的必然:世上的万事万物都应有其存在和运行的原理,法律自然也不例外;法律作为人类的伟大创造,自身即蕴含着追求正义等法律价值的法理;法律的价值观念虽因时代、地区的不同而会有所差异,但其中的基础法理却不受时空影响;对法律的分析和研究舍法理之外别无他途。立足于已有的研究成果,可将法理界定为"在综合各种法律现象的基础上,由学者所抽象并为社会所认同的有关法律基础、法律根据、法律判准、法律渊源的基础性、普遍性原理"。同时,法理与自然规律、社会价值、内存于法典和单行法律中的法律原则以及事理、情理等存在明显的差异,不可混淆。     

法的一般理论及其在中国的发展

法的一般理论作为法学研究的独立分支起源于19世纪中后叶的德国,并在英美和其他国家得到广泛扩散和发展。在前苏联,经过马克思主义哲学的改造,它从一种分析法理论转型为一种社会法理论。中国法理学界对于法的一般理论的继受与发展经过了上个世纪50年代至60年代初对苏联学说的全面继受、80年代初至90年代末期的反思与突破,以及90年代末至今的开放与创新三个阶段,并逐步让位于法哲学和其他交叉学科的研究范式。以法律关系学说的变迁为线索进行梳理总结,可以发现,中国的法的一般理论研究与中国法治实践和法学进步的历史进程休戚相关,在总体框架上深受"苏联学说+民法原型"模式的影响,在研究方法上从采取单一进路开始显现出多种方法合力的端倪。法的一般理论远远没有成为"历史的遗迹",深化对它的研究应成为未来中国法理学的重要着力点。     

Sociological interpretations of legal development

This paper seeks to outline some ways in which sociological inquiry has helped to interpret general processes of legal development. It comments on a few aspects of a vast subject. Furthermore, it was commissioned in a specific context of debate: as part of an agenda of discussion of the relative merits and potential of sociological and economic analyses of law. Hence, to provide a setting for what I try to argue about the character and value of sociological interpretations of legal change, it seems appropriate to preface those arguments with some general ideas about the nature of sociological inquiries in legal contexts and about perceived contrasts between the orientation of these inquiries and what I take to be certain orientations in economic analysis of law. Accordingly this paper is in two parts. The first offers a few prefatory remarks on the character of theoretically guided sociological inquiries about law (sociology of law). The second discusses various kinds of interpretation of legal development, which have been offered from the perspectives of sociology of law.     

The Economic Sociology of Labour Law

Drawing on the work of Max Weber, this article considers the utility of an approach to the study of labour law, which it calls the economic sociology of labour law (ESLL). It identifies the contract for work as the key legal institution in the field, and the primary focus of scholarly analysis. Characterizing the act of contracting for work as an example of what Weber called economic social action oriented to the legal order, it proposes that Weber's notion of the labour constitution be used to map the context within which contracting for work takes place. And it argues that, in comparison to traditional socio‐legal approaches, ESLL has the significant advantage of allowing for account to be taken of the individual and commercial, as well as the social and legal, elements of contracting for work.     

Max Weber on the Labour Contract: Between Realism and Formal Legal Thought

Although Max Weber's review essay of the first part of Philipp Lotmar's The Labour Contract may appear peripheral to his overall contribution to legal sociology, it contains important insights on the relationship of law to economics, the utility of sociological empirical research for jurisprudence, the epistemological gap between 'legal dogmatics' and the sociology of law, and the fundamental distinction between state and non-state law in properly understanding the developmental logic of labour law.
In the review, far from appearing as a rigid partisan of positivistic legal formalism, Weber admits of a kind of 'legal pluralism' as a necessary path to the sociology of law, and allows some measure of realism, when celebrating Lotmar's analysis of the social facts of law as a precondition for proper juristic treatment of the labour contract. Nevertheless, Weber remained distrustful of legal realism which, for him, was founded on an epistemological confusion between 'is' and 'ought'.     

缘何不是法律方法——原本法学的探源

中国法学界对在汉语中到底是使用“法学方法”还是“法律方法”存在着争议。之所以会产生这种争议是因为人们对德国法学中“法学方法论”一词中的“法学”的蕴涵不太清楚。德语的“法学方法论”中的“法学”有特定的内涵和意义,而不是中国法学界所普遍理解的法学。前者是由西方法律文明的创造者——古罗马人所创立的一门独立的科学或实践智慧,是西方两千多年法律文明中绵延不绝的伟大传统。这种传统意义的法学称为原本法学。相对于原本法学来说,现在所谓的其他法学学科如法社会学、法经济学、法史学、甚至法哲学,都是一种交叉或边缘学科。在这种意义下,在汉语中还是使用“法学方法”一词较为合理。     

The sociology of the sociology of law: A view from economics

The sociology of law appears to be a weak field in the United States, in comparison to other indisciplinary fields of legal study, notably economic analysis of law. Although American legal sociologists have done important empirical work, particularly on the litigation process and on the legal profession, the focus of American sociology of law has been narrow, theoretically limited, and, empirically, limited in both scope and method. These deficiencies may reflect the methodological limitations of Max Weber, the most influential figure in the history of sociology in general and sociology of law in particular. The failure of legal sociologists to borrow theoretical and empirical tools from sociologically minded economists such as Gary Becker is especially regrettable, and may be due to inaccurate perceptions of the political valence of economic analysis of law, sociology's traditional skepticism about the knowledge claims of other disciplines, professional envy, and misunderstanding of the economists' conception of rational choice.