LEGAL SOCIOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

There is a considerable growth in research into legal sociology in Colombia. Evidence of

this is the existence of a significant number of research centers, researchers and journals
whose reference is the sociology of law, as well as the presence of a good number of people
who carry out research that has never been assigned such a name but which in our opinion
corresponds broadly to the purposes and methods of socio-legal research.

With the increase in the number of research projects and research centers whose object is
the effect of law on social behavior, the need arises to create spaces for the dissemination
and articulation of this knowledge, an example of which can be found in the "network of
Socio-legal Research Centers." It is clear that today, a social and academic trend can be
identified, which predicts that the discipline will play a very important role in the life of
law schools and in the search for answers to several of the most difficult political and social
problems facing the country. We are talking about the movement that represents a growing
interest in legal sociology in the world related to law, condensed in the first place, in the
centers of power, in the officials of the administration of justice and in lawyers in general.
Secondly, a discipline that allows us to assess and qualify the agenda of international
cooperation institutions, intergovernmental bodies, non-governmental organizations and
social movements that deal with legal matters from different perspectives. Finally, in
academia through law schools. Such interest must be explained with reference to two very
relevant facts of the Colombian historical and social context. On the one hand, the
socioeconomic and political situation of the country that directly affects the law. That is to
say, most of the national problems of notable magnitude are closely related to law, but at
the same time seem to surpass the ordinary canons of legal dogma: violence, difficulties in
the process of building an illegitimate national State, drug trafficking, corruption,
mechanisms of democratic participation, the crisis of the administration of justice as a
space for the treatment of social conflicts, the absence of economic development, the
violation of human rights and social marginality.

On the other hand, the failure of traditional legal policies to address these problems, with
excessive recourse to legal reforms and counter-reforms, without being able to stop the
deterioration of the nation, has called into question the need for a new legal policy. The two
previous facts, the national problems and the deterioration of traditional legal policy, have
attracted the focus of attention towards the sociology of law, in the search for an additional
tool that can provide new elements of judgment to understand the situations faced, also
serving the purpose of finding novel formulas that contribute to overcoming the current
state of affairs.

In short, the expectation and interest that the sociology of law has aroused results from the
need raised by jurists to approach social reality, especially the type of law that acts on the
material world, assuming certain characteristics and causing certain functions. Likewise,
some factors can already be cited that have made a positive contribution to the progress of
legal sociology.

As already mentioned, one of them would be the push that science has had in the university
environment, particularly in law schools, although with an uneven development that is also
a reflection of both the imbalance in the quality of national higher education and the
importance that the different schools give to legal sociology. Valuable elements have
emerged through this avenue, such as: new academic training courses, research centres and
national and international cooperation networks, in addition to intellectual production and
empirical research with university sponsorship.

The second is due to the consolidation of some non-university institutes, located in Non-
Governmental Organizations, with a proven track record in socio-legal research, especially
in relation to the issue of justice and human (J., 2009) rights.

Another factor, largely connected to the above, corresponds to the existence of research
groups, researchers and theorists, with a high level of training, who, although largely
isolated and incommunicado from each other, are fully dedicated to teaching, research and
theoretical creation, which would constitute the indispensable input to address the interest
that has been awakened by legal sociology.

Despite the obvious importance and growth of the sociology of law, there are few debates
about the meaning and elements of this discipline and its difference from legal science. The
purpose of this article is to establish some criteria that identify legal sociology, which will
serve to enrich the theoretical discussion of the same. Three aspects will be addressed.
Firstly, the effort made by the academy to establish the sociology of law as an autonomous
discipline will be analyzed, a debate that has been necessary to establish within the law
schools in order to gain its own space in the academy.

Secondly, we will present another element that identifies and differentiates legal sociology
from law and its interdisciplinary and empirical nature, elements that provide it with its
own methodology and allow it to support its theses. Finally, the changes that have occurred
in legal education, influenced in part by our discipline, are presented.

The study methodology is fundamentally based on the analytical method, through the free
reading of texts that approach our object of study.

LEGAL SOCIOLOGY: AN AUTONOMOUS DISCIPLINE

We establish legal sociology as an autonomous discipline. Therefore, this is a somewhat

descriptive approach that seeks to illustrate the efforts of academics who sought to distance
the meaning of legal sociology from the naturalistic and dogmatic legal currents that
dominated the production of law for much of the 20th century. This is not the time for an
analysis from sociological approaches or perspectives, however, we do want to note that
within socio-legal production, the perspectives are evident and distant from each other,
which we can group into trends of North American legal realism (2001), the critical
sociological theory of law, which analyzes legal systems from the perspective of political
interests and the capital phase. (RODRIGUEZ: 2010: 21), or classical paradigms supported
by Durkheim with his categories of anomie and structure, or the recent works of
contemporary sociologists with contributions from Pierre Bourdieu and the legal field,
referring to the social space that is determined by structured and regulated activities within
it. (Bourdieu: 2000: 155). Let's start by saying that in this text we will use the expressions
legal sociology and sociology of law as synonyms.

This has been a somewhat recurring debate, however, for most authors the solution has
always been to declare their equivalence. Thus, for example, Jean Carbonnier addresses the
elements that could distinguish the Sociology of Law from Legal Sociology, then discards
them and uses both expressions as equivalents in order to guarantee a field of study as
broad as possible.

The positions rejected by Carbonnier are summarized by pointing out that the Sociology of
Law would analyze what constitutes the Law itself, that is, the rules and institutions; while
Legal Sociology "encompasses all the phenomena that in law can be the cause, effect or
occasion. Including the phenomena of violation, ineffectiveness or deviation.” Thus, for
this author, Sociology of Law or Legal Sociology can be defined as "that branch of general
Sociology that has as its object a variety of social phenomena: legal phenomena or
phenomena of Law" (CARBONNIER: 1982: 15).

Before Carbonnier, Georges Gurvitch, professor at the University of Strasbourg in France

and at the New School for Social Research in England, presented his definition of the
Sociology of Law in the following terms: “It is that part of (the) sociology of the human
spirit which studies the full reality of law, beginning with its tangible and externally
observable expressions in effective collective behavior (crystallized organizations,
customary practices and traditions or innovations in behavior) and in the material base (the
spatial structure and demographic density of legal institutions).” (GURVITCH: 1945: 68).
Timasheff (1974), for whom Legal Sociology is a creation of the 20th century, gives us
some insight into the reasons for the difficulty of a satisfactory definition, by pointing out
as problematic the fact that legal sociology is “an attempt to apply the concepts and
methods of one science, sociology, to objects traditionally studied by another science,
jurisprudence, while both sociology and jurisprudence are divided into different schools
that use different methods” (TIMASHEFF: 1974: 44-45). In his work, Renato Treves
distinguishes three different conceptions of the Sociology of Law, which correspond to
different stages of his personal theoretical evolution. They are:

1. Discipline that promotes and develops empirical research for practical purposes,
especially connected with the production and application of Law (1966).

2. Discipline that has as its object of study the relations between Law and society and that is
divided into two parts, one theoretical and the other empirical (1977, 1980).
3. Discipline that develops two different types of research, but connected to each other and
even complementary: the determination of “free law” or law produced outside of formal
legal schemes, and the study of the situation and function of law in society (1988)3
(TREVES: 1988: 19).

The first two approaches focus on the type of research; the first grants empirical research an
undisputed leading role above theoretical production, which was due to the need to
guarantee a space for legal sociology both for sociologists and for jurists in Italy at the
time. The second returns to the general statement of the study of the relations between law
and society, opening the possibility for theoretical developments.

The latter becomes much more specific, embracing on the one hand the so-called free law
and on the other dealing with the situation and function of law in society. This approach is
certainly broader and more comprehensive, but it seems to exclude the micro part of the
judicial world.

In terms of its theoretical location, for some the sociology of law is simply a sector of
sociological research characterized by the peculiarity of its object. For others, as we
mentioned above, it is the generic framework for studying the interaction between society
and the Law; while for others it is limited to the field of empirical analysis of legal attitudes
or behaviors and finally, for many others it extends to encompass everything related to the
functions of the Law, as well as its mechanisms of production and application.

Following the path traced by Carbonnier, the Mexican Jesús Ángel de la Torre, in his text
“Legal Sociology and Alternative Use of Law”, gives the following definition: “Legal
sociology is a scientific discipline related to Law, to the legal phenomenon, that is its
formal object, that is, the perspective from which the analysis of Law is approached…

The scientific task of legal sociology consists of understanding the legal phenomenon as a
result of social processes, interdependent on the effect that the Law has as a regulator of
social action." (FROM THE TOWER: 1997: 40 - 44). In this definition there is a strong
component of formal law and the link with other legal forms that are outside the formal
schemes of Law, recognized by the so-called "legal pluralism", is not clear. Boaventura de
Sousa Santos, a Portuguese sociologist who has had an important influence on some Latin
American authors and teachers at North American and European universities, places legal
sociology as a specialized branch of sociology and also refers to the concepts of social
phenomenon and legal phenomenon (SANTOS: 1991: 149).

In the same sense, for Treviño, the sociology of law “is an academic specialty within the
general discipline of sociology, which attempts to provide theoretical meaning and explain
the relationships between law and society, the social organization of the legal institution
(order of the system), the social interactions of all those who come into contact with legal
institutions and their representatives (police officers, lawyers, judges, legislators, etc.), and
the meaning that people give to their legal reality” (TREVIÑO: 1996: 7). For the Argentine
Oscar Correas, “Legal Sociology or Sociology of Law (...) is a scientific discipline that
attempts to explain the causes and effects of Law” (CORREAS: 1999: 29), understanding
Law as “a prescriptive discourse, produced by whoever holds power, which is recognized
as legitimate, either by the majority of the population of a country, or by its armed forces,
and which organizes violence, which is precisely legitimized by the recognition of that
discourse as law” (CORREAS: 1999: 22). This definition seems limited to us. To say that
the causes and effects of law are the subject of study only of legal sociology is to leave
aside the reflections that have been produced in abundance from other disciplines and
without the slightest presumption of feeding the sociology of law.

Just think, for example, of a study on the effects of a tax regulation (which could be the
subject of a strictly economic study) or one on the causes and background of a Constitution,
from a purely historical perspective. Naturally, it could be argued that in both cases,
regardless of the absence of socio-legal intention, both studies contribute to enriching the
field of socio-legal studies.

But such a position would lead us to affirm that any study in which social life is linked to
legal norms is a socio-legal study and, from our point of view, such an assertion would be
unsustainable.

On the other hand, it excludes from its object of study the judicial operators, the relations
between them and theirs with the norm. As a way to overcome all the subtle complexities
of approaching one definition or another or attempting a new one, Germán Palacios in a
document entitled "The Complexities of Justice: Reflections on the National Plan for
Socio-Legal Research" pointed out: "When referring to the object of socio-legal research,
we do so in the broadest possible sense: justice not as a self-contained code, but as a social
reality, both as a specific way of approaching the problem of social order and as a set of
problems arising from the order itself." Palacios addressed four analytical levels of justice:
as a 'codified apparatus' to a set of structures, norms and rules of the game that structure
social life (justice as an institution); justice as a concept; justice as discourse and, finally,
justice as pedagogy.

However, it seems to us that this approach, despite the analytical levels proposed, entails an
additional problem that we seek to avoid: that of directly relating socio-legal research to
justice.

This concept (justice), more appropriate to philosophy than to sociology, would take us to
other conceptual depths outside the purpose of this text. Finally, Germán Silva, in an effort
to integrate micro and macrosociological perspectives within the sociology of law, defines
it as "the specialty of sociology that deals with institutions (structures) related to legal
control in their relationship with social practices (interactions) that occur in society." This
concept, according to Silva, can be used to define the object of socio-legal research
because, according to him, “the observation of social institutions, limited to those related to
legal control, means considering not only the normative systems established, formally or
informally, or social institutions closely related to the operators of law and the application
of norms (…) (legal profession, judicial structure, professional ideologies, etc.) but also
social institutions of equal or greater complexity such as culture, economy, state
organization, family, etc., which depending on the case and the aspect involved, also have
an impact on legal control, while social practices, seen in their relation to legal control,
imply not only observing how the law is applied in reality (which often occurs in a different
way to how it is stated in the legal statutes), but also examining the attitudes and actions of
the population in relation to the control devices”.

The length of the quote is justified to the extent that it articulates the concept previously
presented with the main themes of the sociology of law. Each of the definitions presented
here has useful elements for establishing the scope of the discipline. However, it is clear
that there is no unanimity on this matter. On the other hand, it is not possible to construct a
cumulative definition, because in some aspects, the definitions, although not contradictory,
their accumulation can force logically incompatible statements. In summary, legal
sociology would have the following characteristics that identify it as an autonomous
discipline compared to law and other social and human sciences:

1. It is seen either as a discipline or as a specialty of sociology.

2. In general, it is not defined as a discipline of law.

3. As for its methods and way of approaching knowledge, it is more closely linked to
sociology than to law.

4. Although not exclusively, it emphasizes the use of empirical research methods.

5. It aims at a critical analysis of legal situations, a realistic approach.

6. It deals with the purposes and functions of law, although it does not have exclusivity
over the subject.

7. It deals with the organization of the legal system, its operators and the way people define
their legal reality.

LEGAL SOCIOLOGY.

HIS INTERDISCIPLINARY AND EMPIRICAL CONTRIBUTION

Legal sociology studies the relationships between law and social behavior. However, the
link with other sciences that may have common themes of interest, such as anthropology,
economics, politics and history, is increasingly evident, and in turn, socio-legal studies are
approaching the use of methods and approaches specific to these disciplines.

Nowadays it is very difficult in practice and trying to draw dividing lines can be a vain
effort since what is really important is the final result of the studies and theoretical
formulations.

On the other hand, the line that separates the different objects of study, as well as their
methods and purposes, is increasingly blurred.
In the field of social and human sciences, interdisciplinarity implies an approximation
between different disciplines, methods and sometimes professionals, to provide an
explanation of an increasingly complex reality.

Nowadays, drawing a boundary between legal sociology and other social disciplines is
harmless; we also know that it is necessary to establish some epistemic identity between the
different disciplines.

The truth is that legal sociology has an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary vocation. A
positive situation since it promotes a comprehensive approach to knowledge that creates a
more open space for the creation of knowledge.

Interdisciplinarity allows us to address various theoretical and social problems in the

relationship between law and society with better conceptual and methodological tools. This
relationship is relevant through the link with topics such as political violence, democracy,
drug trafficking, human rights, studies related to law and gender and legal pluralism, as
well as the effects of globalization on law, forcing sociologists of law to develop creative
relationships with other disciplines. Another example of the interdisciplinary approach is
found in the location of a series of theoretical works and research related to socio-legal
issues that are also addressed by other disciplines.

We are referring to an extensive production of national sociology, economics, social

philosophy and anthropology, which have dealt with political violence, democracy,
territorial organization, drug trafficking, family organization and social movements. These
works, which in most cases surpass in quality and quantity those coming from legal
sociology, sometimes make tangential allusions to the social role or structure of law, but the
epicenter of their reflections does not involve the legal.

Therefore, since the specificity of the legal aspect is absent as a main issue, they are
specific to other non-legal specialties of sociology, or anthropology or economics and are
not included in this study, nor are the different actions and organizational processes that
have given rise to their production. Even though, due to their quality and because they deal
with topics that constitute a central object of study in the sociology of law, they are
indispensable texts and sources of reference for socio-legal research and teaching work.
Within the interdisciplinary perspective, it was essential to analyze the location of the
works of political sociology. Political sociology, by the way, is another specialty of general
sociology that deals quite closely with legal sociology with problems regulated by law and
power. Thus, issues such as the State, power, systems of representation, political
institutions, the organization of the administration, international relations, etc., do not
constitute the exclusive domain of constitutional law and legal sociology; they are also
examined by political sociology, although with very little emphasis on the legal. In such a
case, with the same criteria, when the analysis on the political was not connected or did not
refer to the law or political legal institutions, it was discarded. On the contrary, those works
of political-legal sociology, involved with the so-called public law, were considered one of
the most important aspects of socio-legal activity.

The issue of empirical research in the sociology of law, to which we give a notable value in
this text, demands some precision that, although obvious, is in any case not superfluous. Of
course, to be considered as such, works on the sociology of law must refer to social reality
or always keep it in mind. Likewise, it is clear that the writings of legal sociology,
especially when they are dedicated to the specific analysis of some institution or legal
policy, relate to social facts, which can be accredited in various non-empirical ways, for
example, by resorting to secondary documentary sources (books, press articles, laws,
published jurisprudence, etc.), or by invoking evident facts that, in such case, do not require
proof. Works based on sources such as those indicated belong to the sociology of law and
have a value, greater or lesser, depending on their nature and specific objectives. However,
despite their reference to facts of social reality, they do not therefore have an empirical
basis to support their interpretations or possess an empirical nature.

We understand empirical research as research that uses sociological, quantitative or

qualitative research techniques to collect primary information, such as surveys, in-depth
interviews, workshops, direct or experimental observation, etc. Exceptionally, since they
involve unique field work, we consider empirical research to include works that consult
original documentary sources, not previously processed for the socio-legal inquiry, such as
archives, court books, unpublished files.

CONCLUSIONS
Legal sociology has distinctive features that differentiate it from other social and legal
disciplines. Important debates have developed around the meaning of legal sociology,
which aim to delimit the meaning and concept of this discipline. The central point revolves
around the recognition of the sociology of law as an autonomous discipline, belonging to
the field of general sociology, which provides important elements for understanding the
phenomenon of law and its relationship with social phenomena. However, despite the
construction of its disciplinary border, legal sociology is characterized by having a strong
interdisciplinary content, the fact that it has to work with the legal norm and sociology is
evidence of this. Additionally, the topics of analysis of the sociology of law, such as the
analysis of various legal systems, social control or the relationship with globalization, make
it necessary to approach other disciplines.

Legal sociology is a social discipline that has made important contributions to the role of
law in social behavior. Nowadays there is a considerable increase in the academic
production of the faculties framed in the socio-legal research centers. However, despite the
increase in the production of legal sociology, there is an uncertainty about the quality,
theoretical entity or intellectual coherence and the type of empirical research or scientific
evidence of the works. This situation is due in part to the absence of a discussion on the
meaning and existing approaches in the sociology of law, a situation that is most often
taken for granted.

However, in Latin American socio-legal production there is a great variety of works, with
diverse ideological orientations that have not yet been classified. Among them, there are
also many writings that correspond more to propositions, testimonies or denunciations of a
political nature, where sociology is mistreated and law is almost absent. Such texts receive
little attention in this research. Of course, legal sociology has, like every discipline of
knowledge, a political nature and meaning, but it is not politics itself. Less so when it lacks
theoretical quality and falls back on a propagandistic discourse, becoming a parody of
sociology in pamphlet form.

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