For Jurisprudential

Sociology
PHILIP NONET
A Critique of Black’s Proposition

 Growth and Development of Berkeley School of Sociology of Law as

New Programme
 A critique of Positivism in general and of Black’s variety in particular
 It coincides with the decline of positivist thought and a tendency to
model social sciences in line with natural science
 Nonet defends Berkeley school of thought as well as his colleagues
against Black’s attack
Key Principles of Berkeley School of
Thought

 1. Sociology of law must be jurisprudentially informed

 2. Sociology of law must have a redeeming value for policy
 3. Sociology of law must take legal ideas seriously
Major Problems of Black’s Theory

 He recognizes Applied Sociology but refuses to acknowledge its

importance in development of a General Theory
 He has no problem with the input and methods of Selznick (a non
positivist) but has problems with his generalizations
 Adherence to his dogmatic positivism will lead to intellectual sterility as
it will either result describing known facts or academic naivety.
 Even in his own studies he commits the same mistake that he intends
to avoid viz. the police man making a choice based on his evaluation of
a crime situation.
Bias and Ignorance

 It seems that Black proposes a program for academic ignorance at the

cost of avoiding bias
 Biases can be avoided and may have the possibility of being filtered
and rectified but nothing can be done to correct ignorance
 It does not take into cognizance of interdisciplinary research i.e. use of
methods and theories of other social sciences to develop your own
 There is broad canvas of knowledge beyond the boundaries of natural
sciences
 All philosophical and jurisprudential knowledge is not evaluative
Authority and Value

 Authority of knowledge is not always lies with individual researcher, it

might have community effort or grown over a period of time
 It is perfectly alright to share a piece of knowledge with a rider, that is
academic integrity and academic scepticism
 Values are inherent and essential in a human society
 Positivism is not the only method that sociologists practice
 Our knowledge must not be only theoretical, there has to be
pragmatism and social relevance