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The present paper concentrates on Paul Huvelin's work as a response to, and adaptation of, Emile Durkheim's sociology. The author used a study of Huvelin to illustrate certain problems which Durkheim's ideas posed for sympathetic jurists. The paper considers how one particular legal scholar tried to overcome these, using elements of Durkheim's thinking to develop general sociological insights about law and its history.

Sociology of law and socio-legal studies are sometimes declared unable to give insight into the nature of legal ideas or to clarify questions about legal doctrine. The idea that law has its own 'truth' -- its own way of seeing the world -- has been used to deny that sociological perspectives have any special claim to provide understanding of law as doctrine. This paper tries to specify what sociological understanding of legal ideas entails. It argues that such an understanding is not merely useful but necessary for legal studies. Legal scholarship entails sociological understanding of law. The two are inseparable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]