Leon Petrażycki (; ; 13 April 1867 – 15 May 1931) was a Polish

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

legal scholar Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the a ...

, and sociologist. He is considered an important forerunner of the

sociology of law The sociology of law, legal sociology, or law and society, is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociolo ...

Life

Leon Petrażycki was born into the Polish gentry of the Mogilev Governorate in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. In 1890 he graduated from

Kiev University The Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (; also known as Kyiv University, Shevchenko University, or KNU) is a public university in Kyiv, Ukraine. The university is the third-oldest university in Ukraine after the University of Lviv and ...

, then spent two years on a scholarship in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, and in 1896 received a doctorate from the University of St. Petersburg. At the latter university, he served from 1897 to 1917 as a professor of the

philosophy of law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

. In 1906 Petrażycki was elected to the ill-fated First Duma as a member of the

Constitutional Democratic Party The Constitutional Democratic Party (, K-D), also called Constitutional Democrats and formally the Party of People's Freedom (), was a political party in the Russian Empire that promoted Western constitutional monarchy—among other policies� ...

. When the legislature was dissolved after a few months, he was convicted and incarcerated for his protests. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Russia in 1917, but had to flee the country when the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

revolution succeeded. He found a new home in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

and became the first professor of

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

at Warsaw University in 1919. A prolific writer in several languages and famous lecturer with a large following of students, Petrażycki committed suicide in 1931. However, Petrażycki's contribution to legal sociology and legal theory continues to be debated within various fields of legal research and applied to the study of current legal questions.

Work

Petrażycki published many books in Russian, German, and Polish early in life. Unfortunately, many of his late ideas were preserved only in lecture notes taken by his students. Even in Poland, his work is only partly known. English speakers still largely rely on a compilation of Petrażycki's writings edited by the Russian-American sociologist Nicholas S. Timasheff in 1955. Despite some recent efforts to introduce and revive his work, it is still largely unknown in the West. Petrażycki conceives of law as an empirical, psychological phenomenon that can best be studied by introspection. According to him, law takes the form of legal experiences (emotions, impulsions) implying a two-sided relationship between a right on the one hand and a duty on the other hand. If this legal experience refers to normative facts in a broad sense (statutes, court decisions, but also contracts, customs, commands of any sort) he calls it "positive law"; if it lacks such reference, he talks of "intuitive law". In another conceptualization, he contrasts "official law" (made by the state and its agents) to "unofficial law" (made by societal agents), which brings him close to

legal pluralism Legal pluralism is the existence of multiple legal systems within one society and/or geographical area. History Church and State The notion of "parallel sovereignty" between premodern States and the Catholic Church was an accepted situation ...

. He parallels Eugen Ehrlich´s idea of living law when he states that "the true practice of civil law or any law is not to be found in the courts, but altogether elsewhere. Its practitioners are not judges and advocates, but each individual citizen..." (Petrażycki 1897, as quoted by Motyka) Petrażycki's theory of law is anti-statist and very critical of the

legal positivism In jurisprudence (also known as legal philosophy), legal positivism is the theory that the existence of the law and its content depend on social facts, such as acts of legislation, judicial decisions, and customs, rather than on morality. This con ...

of his time, which he takes to task for being naive and lacking a truly scientific basis because of its focus on norms, rather than the experience of those norms. He also rejects the rather common notion that only human beings can have rights and can therefore be seen as an early proponent of

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all Animal consciousness, sentient animals have Moral patienthood, moral worth independent of their Utilitarianism, utility to humans, and that their most basic interests—such as ...

. Petrażycki has been called the "unrecognized father of the sociology of law" ( Adam Podgorecki 1980/81). His influence on the sociology of law has been primarily indirect through some of his students, specifically Nicholas S. Timasheff, Georges Gurvitch, and Pitirim Sorokin, who each in various ways contributed to formulate a more distinctly sociological perspective, derived from and complementary to Petrażycki's psychological theory.Deflem, Mathieu. 2008
Sociology of Law: Visions of a Scholarly Tradition
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Notes

References

* Banakar, Reza, Who Needs the Classics? - On the Relevance of Classical Legal Sociology for the Study of Current Social and Legal Problems (September 3, 2012). RETSSOCIOLOGI, Ole Hammerslev, Mikael Rask Madsen, eds., Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 2012. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2140775. * Roger Cotterrell, Leon Petrazycki and Contemporary Socio-Legal Studies (2015) 11 International Journal of Law in Context 1-16. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2609155. * Krzysztof Motyka, Law and Sociology: The Petrażyckian Perspective. In: Michael Freeman (ed.) Law and Sociology. Current Legal Issues 2005. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006, pp. 119–140. * Adam Podgórecki, Unrecognized Father of Sociology of Law: Leon Petrażycki. Reflections based on Jan Gorecki's "Sociology and Jurisprudence of Leon Petrażycki". In: Law & Society Review, vol. 15 (1980/81), pp. 183–202. * Jan Gorecki (ed.) Sociology and Jurisprudence of Leon Petrażycki. Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1975. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-007-1479-3_46 * Leon Petrażycki, Law and Morality. Edited with an introduction by N.S. Timasheff. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1955. Reprinted with a new introduction by A. Javier Trevino. New Brunswick: NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011. * Andrzej Kojder, Leon Petrażycki's Socio-legal Ideas and their Contemporary Continuation, 6 Journal of Classical Sociology 2006, pp. 333–358 *Edoardo Fittipaldi, Bonae fidei possessor fructus consumptos suos facit. Tentative Answers to One Question Left Open by Petrażycki's Economic Analysis of Law. Societas/Communitas, 7, 2009, 1, pp. 15–36 * Edoardo Fittipaldi, Psicologia giuridica e realismo: Leon Petrażycki. Milan: LED 2012. * Edoardo Fittipaldi, Everyday Legal Ontology: A Linguistic and Psychological Investigation within the Framework of Leon Petrażycki's Theory of Law. Milan: LED 2012. , http://www.lededizioni.com/lededizioniallegati/600-Fittipaldi-Everyday-Ontology.pdf * Мережко А.А. Психологическая школа права Л.И. Петражицкого. Истоки, содержание, влияние. – Одесса: «Фенікс», 2016.

External links

Onati International Institute for the Sociology of Law
{{DEFAULTSORT:Petrazycki, Leon 1867 births 1931 suicides 1931 deaths People from Syanno district People from Sennensky Uyezd 19th-century Polish nobility Russian Constitutional Democratic Party members Members of the 1st State Duma of the Russian Empire Polish sociologists Philosophers of law Polish jurists Polish feminists Russian judges Russian legal scholars Male feminists Sociologists of law 20th-century Russian philosophers 20th-century Polish philosophers 19th-century Polish philosophers Academic staff of the University of Warsaw Academic staff of Saint Petersburg State University Recipients of the Order of Saint Stanislaus (Russian), 2nd class Recipients of the Order of St. Anna, 2nd class 20th-century Polish nobility

Life

Work

See also

Notes

References

External links