Study On The Law As Ordering

Eugen Ehrlich, as one of the founders of sociology of law, is the character that the peoplewho study the sociology of law are all not open around. He pays attention to the social lifeitself, and put those norms that have practical functions in social life such as the custom lawand the jurists’ law into the concept of law. It expands the extension of the concept of law, andfrom a new perspective to study the nature of law.Ehrlich lives in this era when the capitalism countries successively completed industrialrevolution, and liberal capitalism to monopoly capitalism. In this period, politics andeconomic situation changes sharply, the urgency of social revolution is aggravate, and thetrend that from the view of social point and further from the view of sociological pointemerges as the times require. Ehrlich’s theory of sociology of law forms in this background.Through the investigation of the theoretical origin of Ehrlich’s legal idea we found that,on one hand, Ehrlich is effected by French sociologists Comte and Durkheim’ sociologicaltheory, he introduces sociology positivism method to the study of law, and emphasizes thesocial facts, focus on social life itself. On the other hand, through the criticism to theanalytical law school’s national law central doctrine, Ehrlich gets rid of the limitation thatdefined the law study in the enacted law and with more broad vision to regard the law. On theother hand, based on the criticism and inheritance to the historical school of law, especially tothe Savigny’ s legal theory, Ehrlich continues to complete the research of the nature of lawthat the history school of law unfinished.In the process of constructing his sociology of law system, Ehrlich clears the country’sstatus in society. He insists that country is not the supreme sovereign, without the superiorityof above the society. He considers that country is just one kind of social groups, society uses itas the authorities of the state to give strong support to the implementation of enacted law.Application of observation method, study on social groups, social norms, legal facts,adjudication norms, national law, Ehrlich insists that neither national law nor the law is thenature of law. The conclusion is that the nature of law is the ordering of social groups. It isconfirmed in the preface of “Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law” by EugenEhrlich that in the contemporary or any other age the center of gravity of the legaldevelopment is neither in legislation nor in jurisprudence or judicial decisions, but in the society itself.The thought of Ehrlich is not like some scholars think that it is from one extreme to otherextreme, totally ignoring the effect of national law. Contrarily, based on demonstrate thediversity of social groups, norms mandatory, and the complexity of social life, Ehrlich putsforward the coexistence of the first rank and the second order. He thinks that neither livinglaw nor national law can deal with all social problems, coexistence is the inevitable result ofsocial choice.