【作者】埃贝尔,R.L.
【内容提要】
The sociology of lawyers is one of the most promising avenues for an understanding of law in society for a number of reasons. First, legal specialists-and especially legal representatives are perhaps the feature of contemporary western legal systems that most distinguishes them from those of other times and places, as has been noted by commentators as diverse as Engels and Weber. Second, legally trained specialists perform an extremely wide range of functions today. Lawyers are thoroughly implicated in virtually every subject that has attracted the attention of sociologists of law-courts, dispute processing,administrative agencies, legislatures, social control, impact, public opinion.Even when people engage in legally significant behavior without consulting lawyers they orient that behavior in part toward the legal specialists who so dominate the system, just as people negotiate with reference to law even when they do not mobilize state coercion.8 Third, lawyers behave differently from other people by virtue of the recruitment process and their training, functional specialization, and unique roles. Fourth, the behavior of lawyers cries out for sociological analysis.