The origins of legal sociology mingle with those of sociology. That is a result of the interest in Law and legal subjects, both by those seen by Raymond Aron as the pioneers (Montesquieu, Tocqueville and Marx) and the founders of sociology (Durkheim and Weber). However, it is somewhat paradoxical that such interest in legal sociology has had no continuity. Sociologists seem to have lost interest in law in spite of a few isolated initiatives, especially those by Gurvitch, Lévi-Bruhl and Timasheff. In fact, it was as criminology that legal sociology remained being practiced, especially in the United States, even though criminal law remained as its only object of study. That phenomenon is not a result of chance; it is rather a result of the nearly hegemonic academic position enjoyed after the 1960s by a sociology based on suspicion and on a hunt for the actor, which dismissed the study of Law, seen as a mere superstructural product of relations of production, and saw institutions as mirrors that deformed and were deformed by the social relations system. In fact, it was only in mid-1980s that sociologists started to come to terms with the tradition of pioneers and founders. Then a renewed interest in a legal sociology with only criminal law as its objects emerged, and gradually spread not only in Germanic or Anglo-Saxon countries but also in those of Latin tradition, in both sides of the Atlantic. Nowadays, legal sociology is alive, as seen in the "Presentation" and evidenced by the present Dossier.
Sociology; Legal sociology; Sources of legal sociology; Current issues in legal sociology