Living Law

Reconsidering Eugen Ehrlich

Marc Hertogh, Marc Hertogh

• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781847314772
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Jurisprudence
• Index: Law

This collection of essays is the first edited volume in the English language which is entirely dedicated to the work of Eugen Ehrlich. Eugen Ehrlich (1862-1922) was an eminent Austrian legal theorist and professor of Roman law. He is considered by many as one of the 'founding fathers' of modern sociology of law. Although the importance of his work (including his concept of 'living law') is widely recognised, Ehrlich has not yet received the serious international attention he deserves. Therefore, this collection of essays is aimed at 'reconsidering' Eugen Ehrlich by bringing together an interdisciplinary group of leading international experts to discuss both the historical and theoretical context of his work and its relevance for contemporary law and society scholarship. This book has been divided into four parts. Part I of this volume paints a lively picture of the Bukowina, in southeastern Europe, where Ehrlich was born in 1862. Moreover it considers the political and academic atmosphere at the end of the nineteenth century. Part II discusses the main concepts and ideas of Ehrlich's sociology of law and considers the reception of Ehrlich's work in the German speaking world, in the United States and in Japan. Part III of this volume is concerned with the work of Ehrlich in relation to that of some his contemporaries, including Roscoe Pound, Hans Kelsen and Cornelis van Vollenhoven. Part IV focuses on the relevance of Ehrlich's work for current socio-legal studies. This volume provides both an introduction to the important and innovative scholarship of Eugen Ehrlich as well as a starting point for further reading and discussion.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Prelims
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1 From ‘Men of Files’ to ‘Men of the Senses’: A Brief Characterisation of Eugen Ehrlich’s Sociology of Law
• Part I Eugen Ehrlich: Life, Work and Context
• 2 Governing in the Vernacular: Eugen Ehrlich and Late Habsburg Ethnography
• 3 Venus in Czernowitz: Sacher-Masoch, Ehrlich and the Fin-de-siècle Crisis of Legal Reason
• Part II Ehrlich’s Sociology of Law
• 4 Ehrlich at the Edge of Empire: Centres and Peripheries in Legal Studies
• 5 Eugen Ehrlich’s Linking of Sociology and Jurisprudence and the Reception of his Work in Japan
• Part III Ehrlich and his Contemporaries
• 6 Facts and Norms: The Unfinished Debate between Eugen Ehrlich and Hans Kelsen
• 7 Pounding on Ehrlich. Again?
• 8 The Social Life of Living Law in Indonesia
• Part IV Ehrlich and Contemporary Socio-legal Studies
• 9 Naturalism and Agency in the Living Law
• 10 World Society, Nation State and Living Law in the Twenty-first Century
• 11 Ehrlich’s Legacies: Back to the Futurei n the Sociology of Law?
• Index