Abstract

This essay portrays the first decades of post-war sociology of law as a battlefield between the supporters of an empirically oriented theory and the builders of high theories devoid of empirical foundation. While highlighting that this contrast has become outdated, the author discusses some of the most frequently recurring topics in recent socio-legal studies, such as the multiplicity of sources of law, human rights and the crisis of modern systems of justice, all of which reflect a neo-pluralist vision of law, suggesting that such themes would be better tackled by means of a trial-and-error approach that may help avoid naïve commonplaces of a kind that is untenable in an epoch of social inequalities.