In the Spirit of Weber: Law, Modernity and 'the Peculiarities of the English’ DavidSugarman Introduction What is distinctive about modern social life and the legal order associated with “modernity”? This question has cast an enormous, omnipresent shaciow over the human sciences.' Its foundational character owes much to the great figures of nineteenth and twentieth century sociology and history. Nowthe quest for the singular features of modern social and legal culture has been grounded in a particular story of howwe got from “there” to “here”. “The descriptive and explanatory concepts varied, of course, usually following the various moral evaluations of the newsociety. The growing division of labour, for instance, which could be regarded by one man as the peak of scientific rationality, would be analysed by another, and damned, as ‘alienation’”.- Nonetheless, in retrospect, what has seemed common to all analyses is a concern with the transition from“pre-industrial” to “industrial” society; and the emancipation of secular Reason from Revelation, that is, the movement Earlier versions of this paper were delivered as the Inaugural Lecture marking the establishment of the Institute for Legal Studies at the School of Law, University of Wisconsin - Madison, (March 25, 1985) and the first Gibson/Armstrong Lecture in Lawand History, Osgoode Hall LawSchool, York University, Toronto (October 23, 1986). It was subsequently published as a Institute for Legal Studies Working Paper Series 2:9, September 1987. I wish to express my appreciation to my hosts on both these occasions. Professor David Trubek and Dean John D. McCamus, for their kind and generous hospitality. I amalso grateful toJohn Merrington, for his encouragement when I was setting out on this research; to Peter Litzpatrick, Leonie Sugarman, Ronnie Warrington and, especially, Maureen Cain, for suggestions and criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper; and to Michael Sonenscher, for aiding me to re-think the tr.iditional characterisations of “preindustrial” and “industrial society”. More generally, I should like to acknowledge David Trubek’s unstinting efforts to internationalise and enrich the studv of law and society through the bringing together of scholars from around the world. This essay is for him. ' See, for example, A. Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), Central Problems in Social Theory (London: Macmillan. 1979); and Social Theory and Modern Sociology (Oxford: Polity Press, 1987) pp. vii-viii. - K. Kumar, Prophecy and Progress: the Sociology of Industrial Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986) p. 61.
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