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1 Hans Zeisel, The Law 81 (1967)

handle is hein.zeisel/lawhz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: The Law HANS ZEISEL chapter4 The law from one view is a continuous process of synthesizing facts and rules, with new facts at times engendering new rules. The process takes place wherever law is made: in the legislatures, in the administrative agencies, and in the courts. The facts reach these lawmakers in a variety of forms. The primary source is still the witness who reports on his own private experience. Oc- casionally, however, facts are presented as cumulative knowledge, system- atically gathered through surveys and most recently also through experi- ments, methods that are part of the tool chest of the social sciences. The survey as a source of facts for the law predates modem social sci- ence by centuries and constitutes in fact one of its major historical roots.' But it is only in recent years that the law has begun to use research opera- tions conducted with technical rigor. The uses the law has made of such systematic investigations differ widely, from simple citation in a brief or opinion to being the decisive ground for a judgment or a legal reform.2 The great majority of the studies that come before the law raise only pri- vate issues, assisting courts and agencies in individual litigation. They may be surveys of the quality of contracted goods, of the geographic range from which a drive-in theater draws its clientele, of the commercial effects of a merger, or of the socioeconomic structure of the jurors in a certain community. But although such studies are at times gems of technical per- fection and ingenuity, they will not be discussed here. Their variety is too great, and they seldom reach the higher courts, hence they seldom affect Reprinted from The Uses of Sociology, edited by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, William H. Sewell, and Harold L. Wilensky. Published by Basic Books, Inc. @ 1967 by Basic Books, Inc.

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