Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:27:20.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Vision of Social‐Legal Change: Rescuing Ehrlich from “Living Law”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Brian Z. Tamanaha
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The hundredth anniversary of the original publication of Eugen Ehrlich's Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law is nearly upon us. The book earned high praise from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Roscoe Pound, and Karl Llewellyn as one of the outstanding works of its time. Ehrlich has been identified as an early legal realist, a pioneering figure in legal sociology, and a leading theorist of legal pluralism. In this retrospective review, I explain the strengths and weaknesses of this classic book. Ehrlich articulated an unsurpassed account of dynamic social‐legal change, an account that remains fresh and timely today.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Winter 2011 , pp. 297 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2011 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beale, Joseph H. 1904. Development of Jurisprudence during the Past Century. Harvard Law Review 18 (4): 271–83.Google Scholar
Beale, Joseph H. 1914. The Necessity for a Study of Legal System. AALS Proceedings 1914:31–45.Google Scholar
Bigelow, Melville M. 1905. A Scientific School of Legal Thought. The Green Bag 17 (1): 1–16.Google Scholar
Brandeis, Louis D. 1916. The Living Law. Illinois Law Review 10 (7): 461–71.Google Scholar
Carter, James C. 1890. The Ideal and the Actual in Law. American Law Review 24 (5): 752–78.Google Scholar
Carter, James C. 1907. Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function. New York: De Capo Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Felix. 1937. Review of Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law . Illinois Law Review 31:1128–34.Google Scholar
Cohen, Morris R. 1915. Legal Theories and Social Science. International Journal of Ethics 25 (4): 46–493.Google Scholar
Cohen, Morris R. 1916. Recent Philosophical Literature: Legal Literature in French, German, and Italian. International Journal of Ethics 26 (4): 528–46.Google Scholar
Colt, LeBaron B. 1903. Law and Reasonableness. American Law Review 17:657–78.Google Scholar
Cotterrell, Roger. 2009. Ehrlich at the Edge of Empire: Centres and Peripheries in Legal Studies. In Living Law: Reconsidering Eugen Ehrlich, ed. Hertogh, Marc, 75–94. Oxford: Hart.Google Scholar
Dillon, John F. 1894. Our Law: Its Essential Nature and Ethical Foundations and Relations. Counsellor 3 (4): 99–109.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Eugen. 1916. Montesquieu and Sociological Jurisprudence. Harvard Law Review 29 (6): 582–600.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Eugen. 1917. Judicial Freedom of Decision: Its Principles and Objects. In Science of Legal Method: Select Essays by Various Authors. Trans. Ernest Bruncken and Layton B. Register. Boston: Boston Book Company.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Eugen. 1922. The Sociology of Law. Harvard Law Review 36 (2): 130–45.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Eugen. 1936. Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law. Trans. Walter Moll. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Eppinger, Monica. 2009. Governing in the Vernacular: Eugen Ehrlich and Late Habsburg Ethnography. In Living Law: Reconsidering Eugen Ehrlich, ed. Hertogh, Marc, 21–47. Oxford: Hart.Google Scholar
Gierke, Otto von. 1935a. Basic Concepts of State Law and the Most Recent State Law Theories. University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Sciences and History 25:158–88Google Scholar
Gierke, Otto von. 1935b. The Nature of Human Associations. University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Sciences and History 25:139–57.Google Scholar
Griffiths, John. 1986. What Is Legal Pluralism? Journal of Legal Pluralism 24:1–56.Google Scholar
Hart, H. L. A. 1961. The Concept of Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hertogh, Marc, ed. 2009. Living Law: Reconsidering Eugen Ehrlich. Oxford: Hart.Google Scholar
Hull, N. E. H. 1997. Roscoe Pound and Karl Llewellyn: Searching for an American Jurisprudence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jhering, Rudolph von. 1979. The Struggle for Law. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, John D. 1935. The Genossenschaft‐Theory of Otto von Gierke. University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Sciences and History 25:1–111.Google Scholar
Lewis, William Draper. 1913. The Social Sciences as the Basis of Legal Education. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 61 (8): 531–39.Google Scholar
Llewellyn, Karl. 1930. A Realistic Jurisprudence: The Next Step. Columbia Law Review 30 (4): 431–65.Google Scholar
Llewellyn, Karl. 1931. Some Realism about Realism: Responding to Dean Pound. Harvard Law Review 44 (8): 1222–64.Google Scholar
Llewellyn, Karl. 1951. The Bramble Bush: On Our Law and Its Study. New York: Oceana.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. 1988. Legal Pluralism. Law & Society Review 22 (5): 869–96.Google Scholar
Moore, Sally Falk. 1978. Law as Process: An Anthropological Approach. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat de. 1989. The Spirit of Laws. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
O'Day, James. 1966. Ehrlich's Living Law Revisited: Further Vindication for a Prophet without Honor. Western Reserve Law Review 1966:210–31.Google Scholar
Pocock, J. G. A. 1987. The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pound, Roscoe. 1922. Introduction to “The Sociology of Law.” Harvard Law Review 36 (2): 130–45.Google Scholar
Pound, Roscoe. 1938. Fifty Years of Jurisprudence. Harvard Law Review 51 (5): 777–812.Google Scholar
Rheinstein, Max. 1938. Sociology of Law: Apropos Moll's Translation of Eugen Ehrlich's Grundlegung der Soziologie des Rechts . International Journal of Ethics 48 (2): 232–39.Google Scholar
Ross, Dorothy. 1991. The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Savigny, Frederick von. 1831. The Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence. Trans. Abraham Hayward. London: Littleton.Google Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian Z. 1995. An Analytical Map of Social Scientific Approaches to the Concept of Law. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 15 (3): 501–36.Google Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian Z. 2006. Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian Z. 2008. Understanding Legal Pluralism: Past to Present, Local to Global. Sydney Law Review 30 (3): 375–411.Google Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian Z. 2009. Law. In The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, ed. Katz, Stanley, 17–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian Z. 2010. Beyond the Formalist‐Realist Divide: The Role of Politics in Judging. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tichenor, Vernon H. 1891. The Doctrine of Stare Decisis. Central Law Journal 32:486–89.Google Scholar
Tiedeman, Christopher G. 1892. Methods of Legal Education. Yale Law Journal 1 (4): 150–58.Google Scholar
Tonnies, Ferdinand. 2001 1887. Community and Civil Society. Trans. Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar