Petrazycki According to Pound: A Note on an American Discussion of Legal Pluralism

As we all know, Carol Weisbrod has devoted much care and energy to exploring sources of law other than commands issuing from the various organs of the state. None of us thought she was the first to navigate this terrain, but I’ll bet only a handful (not me) were aware that one important scholarly antecedent is Leon Petrazycki (1867-1931). Petrazycki wrote extensively in Russian, German and Polish and held the first Chair in Sociology at Law Faculty of Warsaw University. Of course, Carol knows of him and his work.
Carol pays scholarly tribute to Petrazycki in her recent essay, Petrazycki According to Pound: A Note on an American Discussion of Legal Pluralism, published in the journal Societas/Communitas that comes from the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of Warsaw (Volume 1 (7), 2009) pp. 69-79. And she does so in her characteristically elegant style of indirection by approaching his work through the question of its reception (or lack thereof) within the United States. Her essay appears as part of an “editorial debate” on the legacy of Leon Petrazycki in Law and Society Studies.

In Carol’s story, Roscoe Pound plays a major role because he was one of the few American scholars in his time period to take note of Petrazycki. And when Pound acknowledges Petrazycki, he does so in a dismissive way, revealing perhaps that as dean of the Harvard Law School he believes he can show off without having always to show up with the scholarly goods. (Harvard has come a long way, baby.) Carol, of course, is far too polite to blame Pound so forthrightly. But she does detail Pound’s own conversion from his 1919 work on the Masons embracing a pluralistic approach to legal sources to his later writing which seems much more state-centered. And she quotes Pound’s published references to Petrazycki, which illustrate a lack of engagement with the latter’s emphasis on multiple sources of law.

Carol then briefly explains why she and many contemporary scholars believe that individuals often find themselves confronting multiple sources of law (state and non-state). She notes the work of the better known (at least to some) Eugen Ehrlich as an early source of inspiration for those seeking to label as law internal systems within the state for relaxing official commands in favor of competing obligations (e.g. conscientious objection or freedom of religion). And she credits Leon Petrazycki as one of the early writers to stress how many sorts of non-state laws play a key role in the minds of individuals living within a regime of organized state law. Carol – your erudition knows no bounds. Congratulations.