Social Engineering

Introduction:-
Man is a social animal and society is needed to live life, work and
enjoy life. A group of individuals forms a society. Society has become an
indispensable condition for human life to develop its personality. Therefore, society
and human life always go hand in hand. Every human being is also born with certain
desires and expectations which are inherent in nature. From childhood to old age,
every human being expects his wish to be fulfilled, for which a conflict of his desires
or claims arises, which falls under the term of interest. It is impossible to fulfill all the
desires of man. Hence the concept of social engineering has come up to fulfill the
desire of maximum human beings for the welfare of society and which was
formulated by Roscoe Pound.
The Concept of Social Engineering:-
Roscoe Pound was one of the greatest leaders
of the sociological school of jurisprudence. He introduced the doctrine of “social
engineering” which aims to build an efficient structure of society resulting in the
satisfaction of maximum wants with the minimum of friction and waste. This
involved a rebalancing of competing interests.
According to Pound, sociological jurisprudence should ensure that lawmaking,
interpreting and applying law take account of social facts. Pound linked the lawyer’s
work to engineering. The purpose of social engineering is to build as much of a
scientific structure of society as possible, which requires the satisfaction of the
maximum of wants and with the minimum of friction and waste. It is the job of a
jurist to assist the country by identifying and classifying interests that are protected
by law.
Roscoe Pound’s social engineering theory is an American correlation to the
interests of German jurisprudence. Roscoe Pound described the work of modern law
as social engineering. Social engineering refers to the balance of competing interests
in society. He observed: “Law is the body of knowledge and experience with the aid
of which a large part of social engineering is carried on. It is more than the body of
rules. It has conceptions and standards for conduct and for the decision, but it has
also doctrines and modes of professional thought and professional rules of art by
which the precepts for conduct and decision are applied and given effect. Like an
engineer’s formulae, they represent experience, scientific formulations of experience
and logical development of the formulations, but also inventive skill in conceiving
new devices and formulating their requirements by means of a developed technique.”
Jurisprudence thus becomes a science of social engineering which means a
balance between competing interests in society. Pound assigns the jurist with a
commission. He follows a method that a jurist would follow for social engineering.
He must study the real social implications of legal institutions and legal principles,
study the means of making legal rules effective, a sociological study in preparation
for lawmaking, a study of judicial method, a sociological legal history.
Pound’s theory that interest is the main subject of law and the act of law is the
satisfaction of human wants and desires. It is the function of law to make a ‘valuation
of interests’, in other words, to make a selection of socially more valuable interests
and to secure them. All this is nothing more than an experiment. That is why
Prof.C.K.Allen describes Pound’s approach as ‘Experimental Jurisprudence’.
Interest Theory:-
To understand their real theory, one need not deviate from the
wealth of information, which is worth more than half a century of academic work.
Pound’s real contribution to the school of sociopolitical jurisprudence is indeed in his
discussion of “legal interests” and “jural postulates”.
Legal Interest:-
According to Pound, there are three categories of legal interests,
namely private (individual), public and social interests.
Individual interests are “claims or demands or desires immediately involved in
personal life and are vocal in the title of that life.” Individual interests are emphasized
for personal life titles. This logically leads to the fact that as these interests by and
large only involve the individual, interests fall within the purview of private law,
although in actual equilibrium this is a generalization that may not always be true.
The public interest is “assertiveness in a politically organized society and the
claims or demands or desires embodied in life in the title of that organization. They
are generally regarded as the claims of a politically organized society thought of as a
legal entity.” These types of interests are articulated in the title or for a politically
organized society. Political interests can be generalized within the purview of public
law including criminal laws, although there is clearly an overlap with personal
interests.
Social interests were originally included by Pound as a separate and important
set of interests under which they were described as the claims or demands or desires
involved in social life in a civilized society. It is not uncommon to regard them as
claims of such a social group. These interests have been regularly associated with the
concept of security. Thus, an important part of protection is for society to enjoy an
organized legal system within a political organization, which may also fall in the
public interest because a political organization requires the existence of some legal
control that can be only provided by the legal system. This issue obscures the
difference between public and social interests and the Pound himself points to the
issue.
The three types of interests are differentiated so that they are balanced against
each other, which is the aim of sociological jurisprudence. However, Pound did not
really insist on having these interests completely separate from each other. As
described above, there is a level of distinction while the overlap between interests is
also evident as they are ultimately three perspectives of a set of interests that exist in
terms of unity and differentiation.
Criticism of the theory:-
Despite Pound’s great contribution to sociological
jurisprudence and his emphasis on studying the actual work of law in society, his
theory suffers from some shortcomings. The Pound’s theory of social engineering has
been criticised on various grounds.
It has been argued that the classification of interests by the Pound is in the
nature of a catalog, in which additions and changes must be made continuously that
are neutral in relation to the value and priority relative to the neutral value. Pound’s
theory of social engineering has been criticized for its use of the term engineering,
which equates society to a factory like a mechanism. Law is a social process rather
than the result of applied engineering. It is also not right to equate society with a
factory because the former is changing and dynamic in nature while the latter is more
or less stable. Again, Pound’s emphasis on engineering ignores the fact that law
evolves and develops in society according to social needs and wants that for which
law can develop in society according to social needs and for which either in law
approval or rejection may occur.
A general criticism against Pound’s theory is about his use of the word
‘engineering’ because it suggests a mechanistic application of the theory to social
needs, the term “engineering” is used by Pound for the metaphor to indicate the
problems that law has to face, the objectives to be met and the method one must
adopt for this purpose.