社会学与自然法.pdf

Citation: 6 Nat. L.F. 84 1961 Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline () Wed Jun 1 02:02:07 2011 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnlines Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at /HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: /ccc/basicSearch.do? operation=gosearchType=0 lastSearch=simpleall=ontitleOrStdNo=0065-8995 SOCIOLOGY AND NATURAL LAW* Philip Selznick AMONG MODERN SOCIOLOGISTS, the reputation of natural law is not high. The phrase conjures up a world of absolutisms, of theological fiat, of fuzzy, unoperational, mystical ideas, of thinking uninformed by history and by the variety of human situations. This is sad, because sociology should have a ready affinity for the philosophy of natural law. Both are anti-formalist in spirit. Each looks beyond what is given and immediate to what is latent and inchoate; each is committed to the study of nature as yielding some- thing more permanent and more universal than the transitory judgments of the hour or the epoch. One of the chief writers on the sociology of law, Eugen Ehrlich, 1 made a cardinal point of his quest for law, not in formal institutions alone, but in the inner order of human associations, in the natural settings and adap- tive outcomes of group life. At the present as well as at any other time, Ehrlich wrote, the center of gravity of legal development lies not in legis- lation, nor in juristic science, nor in judicial d