Émile Durkheim and de sociological analisys of law: the actuality and the limits of a classic

Abstract

This article intends to analyze the contributions and the limits of Émile Durkheim’s sociological approach to the understanding of law. Thus, in the first place, it underlines the relevance of Durkheim’s thinking in the configuration of modern sociology. To do so, it makes a brief incursion into Danilo Martuccelli’s analysis of the matrices of sociological thinking about modernity. Then, from the reconstruction of some fundamental aspects that structure the thesis of the book De la division du travail social, it emphasizes the centrality that law acquires in the thought of Durkheim. In this way, it underlines, above all, that Durkheim conceives law as an external fact that symbolizes the forms of social solidarity (mechanical and organic). Finally, it recovers some critical appraisals that contemporary theorists make about Durkheim’s sociological analysis of law.