Sociological Jurisprudence

law to strict rules and concepts susceptible to mechanical application failed. Elaborate apparatus of individualization of justice, by at least seven agencies, were developed. These are: (1) equitable discretion; (2) legal standards, such as due care; (3) general verdicts of juries; (4) "finding the law" in adjudication of cases; (5) individualized penal sentences; (6) informal justice in petty courts; and (7) administrative tribunals[ J.A. Gardner , 2]. Pound has compared the sociological jurisprudence with other schools of legal thought and notes certain characteristics of adherents to the sociological school. Generally, they pursue a comparative study of legal phenomena as social phenomena and criticize these with respect to their relation

Third, they emphasise the social ends of law rather than sanctions; fourth, they insist that legal precepts be used as guides to socially desirable results rather than inflexible molds and lastly, their philosophical views are diverse, usually positivist or some branch of the social-philosophical school[ J.A. Gardener, 4]. Dean Pound has frequently referred to law as "experience developed by reason and reason tested by experience”. In this field, Pound has made one of his major contributions to the law as a means of social engineering, the classification of legal history into five stages and the discovery and specific formulation of the ends of law in each of these stages. The first stage is primitive law, in which the end of law is to keep the peace. The second stage is that of the strict law, in which the end is certainty and uniformity in the ordering of society[ L. J. McManaman, Social Engineering: The Legal Philosophy of. St. John's Law Review, 33(1), 2013,

The Philosophical School, the oldest in point of time, gradually diverged into three great streams of thought namely the Natural Law School of the Ancient World and of the Eighteenth Century in Europe; the Metaphysical School, led by Hegel and other philosophers and jurists on the Continent; and the Social-Philosophical School, whose main exponents were the Neo-Hegelians. The outstanding feature of the Philosophical School is, in general, the emphasis it places on the eternal unchanging nature of law, looking at it either as conformity to the natural man, or as the expression of some ultimate metaphysical datum as Free-will or Freedom[ E.F. Albertsworth , 1922]. In the viewpoint of this school, there is one eternal law, discoverable by rational speculation, valid for all times, all peoples, and all places, based upon certain eternal categories which lie at the foundation of man's conscience and reason. Briefly, law is reason applied to human affairs, no more, no less. If a particular positive law is not reasonable and it does not conform to our inherent sense of justice and right, it is not law, no matter if so declared by the most absolute of monarchs or the most powerful of governments. Irrespective of whatever criticisms may be made of this school, it cannot be denied that it has led, through its appeal to reason and