Abstract
The sociology of law in America is now being studied by the sociologists rather than the jurists. This trend began in the 1950s. At that time a large scale research program about law and its function in society was begnn. In the 1960s, a lot of empirical publications were produced by the interdisciplinary research method, and non-legal scholars, especially sociologists and political scientists, played an important part in that research. This research method has expanded from the major law schools to almost all law schools in the United States.
Even though the importance of the study of the legal sociology is more and more recognized by the sociologists who were interested in studying law, the works resulting from their studies are scattered and display a great methodological confusion. Therefore they attempt to open the proper field of the sociological approrch to law and establish one basic method.
Philip Selznick is one of the above-mentioned sociologists. He insists that the sociological approach tried up to this time "offers no touch stone for the distinctively legal", and one should try to find the distinctively legal in the private groups. Based on the concepts of Lon L. Fuller's the internal morality of law and H.L.A. Hart's rules of recognition, his studies show the substantive means of the rule of law in the modern legal order. In particular, he researches its development and its functioning in the private government. This essay attempts to introduce his concept of law and methodology of the sociology of law.
