Sociology of law

Along with much that is unhappy, the war in Europe has brought in its train one distinct good for us in the enforced coming to this country of so many eminent scholars from the Continent. In law particularly, the course of history in medieval England, on the one hand, and upon the Continent, on the other hand, led to a deep gulf between two legal traditions-traditions of lawmaking, of law teaching. and of administering justice which have made it difficult for one half of the legal world of today to understand and make effective use of the juristic development of experience in the other. A more intimate contact is coming about which can only be of advantage to each, if only in that each will understand the other.
Again, the academic water-tight compartment idea of the nineteenth century, which sought to keep each of the social sciences strictly in its place, much as the citizen was to be kept in his place in the ideal city-state of the Greek philosopher, has been giving way before a realizing of the need of team play among the social sciences, or of cooperation among them toward common objectives. Sociology, in particular, has been working with jurisprudence toward a better under standing of what we call "law," and of what lies behind the phenomena of the legal order as those phenomena appear to the lawyer.