The Study On Behaviorist Methodology Of Donald Black's Pure Sociology Of Law

A paradigm of social theory of law always includes ontology, epistemology and methodology. The three parts links each other as integrity. Donald Black Promotes"pure sociology of law", puts forward"behaviorist methodology", i.e., treats social life as subject on itself, geometrizes the ambit of the behavior of law in social space, formulates a set of theory theme which are of testability."Behaviorist methodology"puts ethc-neutral scientific knowledge as model, social space as media, and social life as subject .So it can not lead pure sociology included into the concept"behavioral jurisprudence"which always is regarded as including pure sociology of law. Because the latter pursuits a type of jurisprudence, studies the behavior of the judges, policeman and so on, employs many kinds of method such as psychology.Law is the subject matter which pure sociology studies earliest. The first step is to define the subject matter. Donald Black defines law as"governmental social control"。The definition is distinct from any other definition about social control. It is more inclusive and is of purity. But this definition can not fulfill the promise of university. It can not escape the context of west civilization. More than this, the definition in part or wholly ignores the rule, so it ignores many important legal phenomenon which ought to be studied in the sociology of law. For example, we need to explain the obeying and offending of the rule.The second step of the theory construction is to design the law as a numbering concept and stylize it. The key step is to set up s set of standard for accounting. But these standards are not free from the help of social psychology, but are hard to objectify. We have to understand the meaning of action in the process of constructing the four styles. The third step is to construct a social space with five dimensions- horizontal, vertical, normative, social controls, culture–through the defining and numbering to include various existed Theories. So many statements such as"X IS The function of Y"explain the relation between law and other five aspects of social life. But it still faces the difficulties of objectiveness of numerate. For example, the relation distance is cannot only measured by the people's external interaction. We must know the internal status of the actor. So intimacy is hard to test through the external behavior.These statements follow the scientific model of explanation-deductive mode. Although these statements are supported by many data, they have some problems as follows: firstly, the relation of these five dimensions self is not clear. Secondly, Law is not only a dependent variable .It maybe an independent variable. For example, the tax law can change the location in the stratification. Thirdly, the validity of the data is dubious."Behaviorist methodology"dreams of pure sociology. It eliminates people, end and psychology, so it appears that it fulfills the characteristics of the scientific knowledge. But the strength of the theory comes from existed theory. The analytic framework is full of the knowledge of western civilization. The dates he quoted show the legal phenomenon in the western society, eastern society and tribe society through the eyes of the western people. So, we must be cautious of these biases existing in the pure theory of law.