Weber Reading Stammler: What Horizons for the Sociology of Law?
| Published date | 01 September 2013 |
| Author | Michel Coutu |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2013.00630.x |
| Date | 01 September 2013 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 40, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2013
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 356±74
Weber Reading Stammler: What Horizons for the Sociology
of Law?
Michel Coutu*
This article asks whether the two studies by Max Weber that form his
Critique of Stammler are by now only marginal to a study of Weber's
work, of historical interest only, given that Rudolf Stammler has long
since been relegated to almost complete obscurity. Or could they still
lead to a better understanding of the thought of Max Weber? This
article argues that the Critique of Stammler offers a still-relevant
contribution to sociological reflection, particularly about law, and
valuable guidance for distinguishing normative legal orders from
empirical ones, and measuring the causal influence of the former on
the latter.
INTRODUCTION
Do the two studies of Max Weber that form the Critique of Stammler
1
play
only a marginal role in the work of Weber, presenting at most a certain
historical interest for what is in fact a century-old debate, marked by the
almost complete obscurity into which Rudolf Stammler fell several decades
ago? Or, on the contrary, could they allow the reader to better understand the
thought of Max Weber, this great classic of sociology? Could we even
356
ß2013 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2013 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*School of Industrial Relations, Universite
Âde Montre
Âal, Pavillon Lionel-
Groulx, 3150 rue Jean-Brillant, Montreal, QC, H3T 1N8, Canada
michel.coutu@umontreal.ca
A first draft of this study was published in French in Droit et socie
Âte
Â(`Weber lecteur de
Stammler: nouveaux horizons pour la sociologie du droit?' (2009) 73 Droit et socie
Âte
Â
667±84). Special thanks to Alexandra Law for the English translation.
1 See M. Weber, Critique of Stammler, tr. G. Oakes (1977). Translations of `R.
Stammlers ``U
Èberwindung'' der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung' and of
`Nachtrag zu dem Aufsatz u
Èber R. Stammlers ``U
Èberwindung'' der materialistischen
Geschichtsauffassung' in M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsa
Ètze zur Wissenschaftslehre
(1968, 3rd edn.) 291±383 (GAW henceforth). See, also, the French translation, Rudolf
Stammler et le mate
Ârialisme historique, tr. M. Coutu and D. Leydet, with the
cooperation of G. Rocher and E. Winter (2001).
suggest that the Critique of Stammler offers a still-relevant contribution to
sociological reflection, particularly about law? It is this final point of view
that we will defend here, arguing that Weber's study on Rudolf Stammler
delivers, along with all of Weber's analyses of law, of course, valuable
guidance for distinguishing normative legal orders from empirical ones, and
measuring the causal influence of the former on the latter.
Even if the French translator of part of Weber's methodological essays,
2
Julien Freund, was of the opinion that the studies on Stammler remained
those which offer `the least interest for knowledge of Weberian epistem-
ology',
3
this is certainly not the communis opinio of Weber specialists.
4
That
the attentive reading of the two texts by Weber on Rudolf Stammler gives us
a key for access to his sociological conceptions is beyond doubt: Weber
himself stated, right from the `Prefatory Note' (Vorb emerkung) that
introduces the text of Economy and Society, that the work of Stammler is
the source of serious errors: this is why he refers to his critique of Stammler
published in 1907
5
in the Archiv fu
Èr Sozialwissenschaft, emphasizing that it
`contains many of the fundamental ideas of the following exposition.'
6
The recent publication in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe of the sections
of Economy and Society devoted to the sociology of law
7
makes this element
even clearer. As expressed in the introduction and detailed footnotes written
by the editors, Werner Gephard and Sigfried Hermes, the primary text
devoted to the relationship between law and the economy is aimed entirely
against the positions of Rudolf Stammler, particularly against the confusion
he demonstrated, according to Weber, between the legal order in its
normative sense and the legal order in its empirical sense. Of course, the
refutation of Stammler essentially disappears into the background in the
context of the long chapter VII of Economy and Society, on the processes of
rationalization of law. Nevertheless, Stammler implicitly reappears in
several important passages of this chapter, particularly when Weber judges
attempts to return to the concepts of natural law to be illusory, even under
the procedural form of a natural law with variable content, which effectively
summarizes Stammler's theory of justice. Whoever attentively reads the
357
2 See M. Weber, Essais sur la the
Âorie de la science (1965), partial translation by Julien
Freund of the Gesammelte Aufsa
Ètze zur Wissenschaftslehre.
3 Freund, `Introduction', id., p. 76.
4 See, for example, C. Colliot-TheÂleÁne, `De l'autonomie de la sociologie du droit. La
norme et la reÁgle' in C. Colliot-TheÂleÁ ne, E
Âtudes we
Âbe
Âriennes. Rationalite
Âs, histoires,
droits (2001) 195±217.
5 The first of the two studies mentioned in n. 2, above.
6 M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1972) 1. English translation, M. Weber,
Economy and Society, by G. Roth and C. Wittich (1978) 4.
7 M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen
Ordnungen und Ma
Èchte. Nachlaû, Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, vols. 22/3: Recht,
eds. W. Gephart and S. Hermes (2010) In English, see Weber, id. (1978), pp. 311±38
(vol. I), pp. 641±900 (vol. II).
ß2013 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2013 Cardiff University Law School
To continue reading
Request your trial