Eugen Ehrlich

Eugen Ehrlich (1862 to 1922) was an Austrian legal scholar and sociologist of law, widely regarded as one of the primary founders of the sociology of law. Born in Czernowitz in Bukovina, he studied law in Lemberg and Vienna and later taught at the university of Czernowitz, serving as its rector in 1906 and 1907. Observing how Austrian state law and local custom coexisted in Bukovina, he argued that law must be understood through the living law of social associations as well as through statutes and court decisions. He distinguished norms for decision from the social norms that make everyday association stable, and held that the sources of law are plural. He died in Vienna in 1922.