Leon Petrazycki

Leon Petrażycki was a Polish philosopher, legal scholar, and sociologist. He is considered an important forerunner of the sociology of law. He studied law and medicine at Kiev University, and then continued his education in Berlin, Heidelberg, Paris, and London. He translated Julius Baron's System of Roman Law into Russian and published several works on Roman law and economics. He became a professor of the philosophy of law at St. Petersburg University in 1897 and served there until 1917. He was also elected to the First Duma in 1906 as a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, but was imprisoned for his protests when the Duma was dissolved. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Russia in 1917, but had to flee the country after the Bolshevik revolution. He settled in Poland and became the first professor of sociology at Warsaw University in 1919. He had a large following of students and was a prolific writer in several languages. He committed suicide in 1931. Petrażycki developed a psychological theory of law, based on the idea that law is an empirical phenomenon that can be studied by introspection. He distinguished between positive law and intuitive law, depending on whether the legal experience refers to normative facts or not. He also contrasted official law and unofficial law, which brings him close to legal pluralism. He criticized the historical school of law for copying past institutions instead of adapting law to the current social and economic situation. He influenced many legal thinkers, such as Eugen Ehrlich, Hans Kelsen, and Nicholas S. Timasheff.