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LAW THROUGH SOCIOLOGY’S LOOKING GLASS 65

Sociology

“Pure” Socio-Legal Research “Applied” Socio-Legal Research
(Reflecting the Concerns of Sociology) (Reflecting the Concerns of Law and Policy-makers)

The Sociology Law and Sociological Socio-Legal Studies
of Law Society Studies Jurisprudence (Law in Context and Policy Research)

Other Social Sciences
(Social Anthropology, Political Science, Psychology and Economics)
Figure 5.1 Relationship between socio-legal approaches.

sociology; secondly, it treats law either as a broadest in terms of the theoretical and
socially dependent or independent ‘variable’; methodological constraints that it subscribes
and, finally, it adopts an empirical approach to. Not only does Sutton avoid specifying
to collecting the data it needs in order to how sociological studies of law should pro-
conduct its analysis (Ferrari, 1989: 9). The ceed methodologically, he also avoids sub-
notion of ‘empirical’, as it is used here, scribing to any concept of law. At least in
should be understood broadly. Some research principle, Sutton allows the possibility of a
orientations adopt a strict positivistic inter- form of ‘legal behaviour’ which exists inde-
pretation of what empirical data means, pendently of positive law and thus, of the
i.e., they understand it in terms of data collected State. Baumgartner, on the other hand,
systematically through surveys, interviews, adopts a strictly positivistic approach to the
etc., while other orientations use more inter- study of law. His approach is positivistic in
pretive methods, such as discourse analysis the methodological sense of recognizing
of legal texts. John Sutton, for example, only what is ‘observable and measurable’ as
describes law as ‘a group activity’ and the its proper subject matter, and it is positivistic
sociology of law as the study of ‘the legal in a legal philosophical sense of equating law
behavior of human groups’ (Sutton, 2001: 8). with positive law. These two definitions show
On the other hand, M. P. Baumgartner, who that the sociologists of law can, and often
is influenced by Donald Black’s positivistic do, differ on how law is to be conceptualized
approach (Black, 1976), defines the sociol- and studied. These disagreements should
ogy of law as ‘the scientific study of legal be viewed against the background of
behaviour’, a study which deals only with the multifaceted nature of the law and the
what is ‘observable and measurable’ while epistemic tension we discussed in the
aiming to ‘predict and explain legal varia- previous section.
tions of every kind’ (Baumgartner, 2000: The sociology of law studies legal behav-
406). Sutton’s definition appears to be the iour, institutions and systems in the tradition