Leon Petrażycki (

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

: Leon Petrażycki;

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

: ''Лев Иосифович Петражицкий'' ev Iosifovich Petrazhitsky born 13 April 1867, in Kołłątajewo,

Mogilev Governorate The Mogilev Governorate () or Government of Mogilev was a governorate () of the Russian Empire in the territory of the present day Belarus. Its capital was in Mogilev, referred to as Mogilev-on-the-Dnieper, or Mogilev Gubernskiy. The area of the ...

, now in

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

– 15 May 1931, in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

) was a Polish philosopher,

legal scholar Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

, 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 sociology, ...

Life

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

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

. In 1890 he graduated from

Kiev University Kyiv University or Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ( uk, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка), colloquially known as KNU ...

, then spent two years on a scholarship in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, 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 Philosophy of law is a branch of philosophy that examines the nature of law and law's relationship to other systems of norms, especially ethics and political philosophy. It asks questions like "What is law?", "What are the criteria for legal val ...

. In 1906 Petrażycki was elected to the ill-fated

First Duma The State Duma, also known as the Imperial Duma, was the lower house of the Governing Senate in the Russian Empire, while the upper house was the State Council. It held its meetings in the Taurida Palace in St. Petersburg. It convened four tim ...

as a member of the

Constitutional Democratic Party The Constitutional Democratic Party (russian: Конституцио́нно-демократи́ческая па́ртия, translit=Konstitutsionno-demokraticheskaya partiya, K-D), also called Constitutional Democrats and formally the Party of P ...

. 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 (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

revolution succeeded. He found a new home in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

and became the first professor of

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

Warsaw University The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...

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. Plural legal systems are particularly prevalent in former colonies, where the law of a former colonial authority may exist alongside more tradi ...

. 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 Legal positivism (as understood in the Anglosphere) is a school of thought of analytical jurisprudence developed largely by legal philosophers during the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. While Bentham and Austin de ...

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 worth that is independent of their Utilitarianism, utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding s ...

. 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 Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (; russian: Питири́м Алекса́ндрович Соро́кин; – 10 February 1968) was a Russian American sociologist and political activist, who contributed to the social cycle theory. Background ...

, 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 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