Eugen Ehrlich

Eugen Ehrlich (1862–1922) was an Austrian legal scholar and sociologist.

He was born in Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi in Ukraine), which was at that time part of the Bukovina province of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Ehrlich studied law in Vienna, where he taught and practised as a lawyer before returning to Czernowitz to teach at the University there, a bastion of Germanic culture at the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He remained at the University for the rest of his teaching career and was Rector in 1906-7. During the turmoil of World War I, when Czernowitz was occupied several times by Russian forces, he moved to Switzerland. After the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the ceding of the Bukovina to Romania, Ehrlich planned to return to Czernowitz, where he would have been required to teach in Romanian, but he died of diabetes in Vienna in 1922.

The location and circumstances of his career were significant, as his experience of Bukovina's legal culture, where Austrian law and local custom seemed to co-exist, caused him to question the hierarchical notions of law propounded by such theorists as Hans Kelsen. Ehrlich is considered as one of the founders of the sociology of law. He noted that earlier legal theories that recognize law as a sum of statutes and judgments gave an inadequate view of the legal reality of a community. He drew a distinction between norms of decision and social norms or norms of conduct. The latter actually govern the life in a society and can be regarded in popular consciousness, if not necessarily by lawyers, as law. For example, commercial usage and custom may develop and be recognized and respected by courts of law. The point Ehrlich sought to make was that the "living law" which regulates social life may be quite different from the norms for decision applied by courts. Norms for decision regulate only those disputes that are brought before a judicial or other tribunal. Living law is a framework for the routine structuring of social relationships. Its source is in the many different kinds of social associations in which people co-exist. Its essence is not dispute and litigation, but peace and co-operation.