Durkheim and the Law

Steven Lukes is Professor of Sociology at New York University, USA. He studied at Oxford and has previously held posts at Oxford, Florence, Siena and London. He is an emeritus Fellow of the British Academy and an editor of the European Journal Of Sociology. His writing and teaching have ranged over political science, political and moral philosophy, sociology, anthropology and the philosophy of the social sciences. He is the author of Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work (1972) and, most recently, Moral Relativism (2005). Andrew Scull is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He was educated at Balliol College Oxford, and at Princeton and has held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and the University of California. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books, has held fellowships from (among others) the American Council of Learned Societies and the Guggenheim Foundation, and is past President of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.

• List of SourcesPrefaceAcknowledgementsEditors' Introduction1. The Durkheimian View of Morality and Law2. Law as an Index of Social Solidarity3. From Repressive to Restitutive Law4. The Evolution of Punishment5. Crime and Punishment6. The Legal Prohibition of Suicide7. The Moral Foundations of Modern Law: Individualism8. The Origins of Law9. The Basis and Evolution of ContractReferences and sourcesIndex.

"No social thinker has written more boldly about the law in its connections with solidarity, penality, morality, and individuality than Emile Durkheim. This superb anthology of his key statements on the topic mixes and melds revolutionary social theory, sweeping historical observations, and luminous civic philosophy. It is mandatory bedside reading for any and all scholars who wish to decipher the ubiquitous and fast changing role of legal institutions and categories in the contemporary world." - Loic Wacquant, author of Punishing the Poor and Tracking the Penal State "Law figured prominently in Emile Durkheim's work, as an object of sociological analysis, as an index of patterns in social change, as the focus of his great debate with Gabriel Tarde, as an instance of symbolic order and a key example of the attempt to regulate society and achieve the discipline necessary for moral order. Steven Lukes and Andrew Scull do a fine job of drawing together and clearly introducing the multiple, different dimensions of Durkheim's engagement with law, whether in relation to evolution, or morality, or freedom." - Craig Calhoun, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK "Durkheim and the Law is back! When it first appeared 30 years ago, this excellent collection instantly became essential reading on every 'sociology of law' syllabus. Now in a revised, expanded edition - with additional works by Durkheim as well as a powerful new introduction by the Editors - this indispensable volume is better than ever." - David Garland, New York University, USA