LAW AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Law and the Social Sciences was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The author, a distinguished authority on law, provides an illuminating and challenging discussion of the social aspects of law and legal problems. As a background to some penetrating observations, he takes stock of the contributions and interrelations of the bodies of knowledge, from both the juristic and the social science side, which bear upon the study of law at the present time. He is concerned to show the respects in which jurisprudential ideas in this area have been stimulated and clarified by work in the social sciences, and, conversely, to draw attention to the need for the increased interest of social scientists in this area to take account of juristic insights, many of them of long standing. He points out some of the dangers, not limited to waste of effort, arising from "parochialism" on the part of either the lawyer or the social scientist. The final section is devoted to a study of the contributions, potentialities, and limits of behavioralist and computer techniques in understanding and operating the appellate judicial process.

The book is based on a series of three lectures given by the author as the William S. Pattee Memorial Lectures sponsored by the University of Minnesota Law School.

Julius Stone was the Challis Professor of Jurisprudence and International Law at the University of Sydney, Australia. He was the author of many books standard in their fields, among them, “The Province and Function of Law,” “Law and Society,” “Legal Education and Public Responsibility,” and “Legal Controls of International Conflict.” He received a number of honors and awards including the Prize for Jurisprudence of the Royal Society of Arts, London, 1964, and the World Legal Research Award, 1965.