法律的社会形态:法律社会学的“无权力”范式

Law's Social Forms: A Powerless Approach to the Sociology of Law

自1960年代兴起的"法律与社会运动"以来,美国的法律社会学领域始终被权力/不平等范式所主导。本文基于法律的形式与实质的社会学差异,概述了一个不同于主流的权力/不平等范式的"无权力"的法律社会学研究范式。这一新范式继承了齐美尔和芝加哥社会学派的理论传统,不以权力关系和不平等现象来分析法律系统,而是依据其社会形态,或者说是依据建构法律系统的空间全景和时间性的结构及过程来进行研究。本文对权力持激进立场,不仅是呼吁法律社会学研究应当回归社会理论,也是为了超越以美国为中心的法律社会学研究、发展新的社会科学研究工具以解释世界各地更广范围的法律现象的一次努力。

Since the law and society movement in the 1960s, the sociology of law in the United States has been dominated by a power/inequality approach. Based on a sociological distinction between the forms and substances of law, this essay outlines a ＂powerless＂ approach to the sociology of law as a theoretical alternative to the mainstream power/inequality approach. Following Simmel and the Chicago School of sociology, this new approach analyzes the legal system not by its power relations and patterns of inequality, but by its social forms, or the structures and processes that constitute the legal system＇s spatial outlook and temporality. Taking a radical stance on power, this essay is not only a retrospective call for social theory in law and society research, but also a progressive effort to move beyond US-centric sociolegal scholarship and to develop new social science tools that explain a larger variety of legal phenomena across the world.