Sociological School of Jurisprudence

Table of Contents

Sociological jurisprudence is usually described as functional jurisprudence or jurisprudence of interests or jurisprudence of social engineering or experimental jurisprudence.
The main concern of the sociological school of jurisprudence is social interest.
According to this school, the law is an instrument of social progress.
Sociological school of jurisprudence emphasizes the study of the effect of law and society on each other.
The leading exponents of this school were:

French philosopher
Father of sociological school of jurisprudence.
He termed the study of society as scientific positivism because according to him, an organization can progress according to the principles formulated based on observation and experiment.

Father of American sociological jurisprudence.
Major works:
Spirit of the common law (1921)An introduction to the philosophy of law (1922).Interpretation of legal history(1923).
The contribution of Roscoe Pound to the sociological jurisprudence may be studied under the following heads:

Roscoe Pound stated that the function of law is to settle the conflicting interests of individuals in the community and harmonize their interrelations. He termed this as ‘Social – engineering’.

Social engineering means to speed up the process of social order by making all possible efforts to avoid conflict of interests of individuals in society.
He categorized various interests.

Jural means legal and postulates means assumptions.
There are basic assumption for proper order and balance of society.
These assumption are implied and not expressed from are called as jural postulates.
Pound mentioned five jural postulates:
No intentional aggression
Benificial purpose
Act in good faith.
Act with due care
Strict liability

Criticism :
Criticism on the term engineering which equates society to a factory like mechanism .
Division of interest is not proper.

LEON DUGUIT(1859-1928):
French philosopher
Propounded the theory of social solidarity
Duguit theory is also based on the theory of Durkheim ‘Division of labour in society’