The Influence of Sociology on American Jurisprudence from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Critical Legal Studies

Abstract

This paper analyzes the distinctive influence that sociology has had on legal scholarship during the past century. It examines some of the more significant contributions that sociology has made to four of the major jurisprudential "movements" of the twentieth-century: Holmesian legal science, sociological jurisprudence, legal Realism, and Critical Legal Studies. In essence, this paper shows how sociology has: (1) contributed to the language of the law some of its more important concepts, (2) given jurisprudence penetrating insight inlo the social dynamics of the law, (3) revealed the close relationship which exists between law and the other social institutions, (4) provided jurisprudence with a positivistic, structural methodology by which to study the law, and (5) inspired a legal approach that is perspectival and hermeneutical in orientation.