Zagreb
Edward B Taylor
"That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society. According to
Kroeber the consensus of most social scientists is that
culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit of and for
behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols constituting
the distinctive achievements of human groups including
their embodiments in artifacts ; the essential core of
culture consists of traditional ideas and especially
their attached values. Some sociologists exclude
material objects from their definition of culture. They include
technical knowledge about the artifacts.
PAUL VALÉRY,‘L’EUROPÉEN’], PAUL VALÉRY, ‘THE EUROPEAN’

Partout où les noms de César, de
Gaius, de Trajan et de Virgile,
partout où les noms de Moïse et
de St Paul, partout où les noms
d’Aristote, de Platon et d’Euclide
ont eu une signification et une
autorité simultanées, Là est
l’Europe.” .” : “Il est remarquable
que l’homme d’Europe n’est pas
défini par la race, ni par la
langue, ni par les coutumes mais
par les désirs et par l’amplitude
“
de la volonté (…).
“Wherever the names Caesar,
Gaius, Trajan and Virgil,
wherever the names Moses
and St. Paul, wherever the
names Aristotle, Plato and
Euclid have a sgnificance
and carry weight, that is
where Europe is
“It is remarkable that the
people of Europe are not
defined by race, nor by
language or customs, but
by desires and breadth of
will (…)”.
A

HUSSERL LECTURE OF MAY 1935 ‘PHILOSOPHY AND THE CRISIS OF EUROPEAN
HUMANITY
“Es ist nun auch ersichtlich, dass von
hier aus eine Übernationalität völlig
neuer Art entspringen konnte. Ich
meine natürlich die geistige Gestalt
Europas. Es ist nicht mehr ein
Nebeneinander verschiedener
Nationen, die sich nur durch Handelund Machtkämpfe beeinflussen,
sondern: Es ist ein neuer Geist, von
Philosophie und ihren
Sonderwissenschaften herstammend;
ein Geist, freier Kritik und
Normierung auf unendliche Aufgaben
hin, er durchherrscht das
Menschentum, schafft neue,
unendliche Ideale!”
One can also see that it’s the starting
point of a new kind of community,
one which extends beyond nations.
I am referring, of course, to Europe
in a spiritual form. It is now no
longer a number of different
nations living alongside each other
and only influencing each other
through commercial competition or
power struggles, but it is: a new
spirit – stemming from philosophy
and the sciences based on it – a
spirit of free criticism, providing
norms for infinite tasks, and it
dominates mankind, creating new,
infinite ideals.”
: “Europe’s
existential crisis can end in only one of two ways: in its demise, alienated
from its own rational sense of life, and lapsing into a hatred of the spirit and into
barbarism; or in its rebirth from the spirit of philosophy, through a heroism of
reason (…)”. national cultures themselves and of the
close and complex relationships between these
highly diverse cultures which ensure the cultural
unity of Europe.
Cultural identity and unity amid the diversity of national cultures does not amount to
the simple indefinite expansion of an original cultural core. I see Europe’s
cultural identity as a tightly woven fabric. This fabric consists on the
one hand of a warp thread carefully stretched, which corresponds to
the many strong national cultures, which themselves have their own
identity and find their origins in a distant past; on the other hand,
there is the weft thread, which represents the interwoven
transnational bedazzlement and admiration, the reciprocal
influences crossing the frontiers between cultures and between
languages. I imagine this literary, artistic, linguistic, European cultural fabric as
drawing its beauty, its unity and its solidity from the sheer number and diversity of
its threads.
Law and legal systems are cultural products
like language, music, and marriage
arrangements. They form a structure of
meaning that guides and organizes individuals
and groups in everyday interactions and conflict
situations. This structure is passed on through
socially transmitted norms of conduct and rules
of decisions that influence the construction of
intentional systems, including cognitive
processes and individual dispositions. The latter
manifest themselves as attitudes, values, beliefs,
and expectations.
According to their level and type of political participation and the nature of people's attitudes toward politics,
Gabriel Almond and Sidny Verba outlined three pure types of political culture:
Parochial - Where citizens are only remotely aware of the presence of central
government, and live their lives near enough regardless of the decisions taken by
the state. Distant and unaware of political phenomena. He has neither knowledge or
interest in politics. In general congruent with a traditional political structure.
Subject - Where citizens are aware of central government, and are heavily
subjected to its decisions with little scope for dissent. The individual is aware of
politics, its actors and institutions. It is affectively oriented towards politics, yet he is
on the "downward flow" side of the politics. In general congruent with a centralized
authoritarian structure.
Participant - Citizens are able to influence the government in various ways and they
are affected by it. The individual is oriented toward the system as a whole, to both
the political and administrative structures and processes (to both the input and
output aspects). In general congruent with a democratic political structure.
These three 'pure' types of political culture can combine to create the ‘civic culture',
which mixes the best elements of each
Almond, Gabriel A., Verba, Sidney The Civic Culture. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1965.
The concept "legal culture" figures often and
prominently in the scholarship of the diverse
disciplines of socio/legal studies. Political scientists,
for example, use the concept to account for variation
in the permissible legal delay in trials and in the
behavior of judges and lawyers, as well as to explain
differences in rates of litigation.
Sociologists have found the concept useful for analyses
of the ethics and practices of legal organizations. And
anthropologists, using a more holistic approach, have
characterized the legal cultures of entire societies.
Indeed, this notion "legal culture" is one of the most
general and ubiquitous concepts in the study of law
and society.
And as more and more nations from Central and Eastern Europe (and
perhaps even to the eastern outskirts of Europe (e.g., Poland,
Turkey) seek to join the European Union, the question of the
diversity of legal values becomes all the more
important for transnational legal policy. Furthermore, the structures of formal European
legal systems vary; for example, the system is common law
in Britain and Ireland, civil law in France and most of the
Continent, with important (even if subtle) differences among those
systems stemming from civil law traditions. Thus, it seems quite
likely that the cultural values underpinning these systems differ as
well. Although ours is only an initial foray into the structure of
legal values in Europe, the importance of the issue may well justify
the tentative nature of our efforts.
JAMES GIBSON
GREGORY CALDEIRA
HTTP://WWW.JSTOR.ORG/PSS/3054034
1.
Support for Rule of Law
2.
Perceptions of the
Neutrality of Law
3.
Valuation of Individual
Liberty
LEGAL CULTURES IN
EUROPE Law&Society
Rewiew 30, 1, 1966
(1) legal consciousness, which refers to
specific attitudes toward legal issues and
institutions;
(2) legal cultural values, by which we mean
more general values relevant to the legal
system but not necessarily closely
connected to it; and
(3) more general cultural values, such as a
preference for individualism over
collectivism, trust in people,
Willingness to tolerate exceptions to the law is an attitude of
some importance in the operation of a legal system. At the
extreme, of course, nearly everyone agrees that there are
some circumstances under which law must be put aside in
favor of justice or self-interest or the need to craft immediate
solutions to pressing political and legal problems. At the
opposite end of the continuum, nearly everyone also
believes that, in general, laws ought to be followed, that
citizens and rulers have a normative obligation to abide by
the rule of law, and that under most circumstances the
universal and equal application of the law should prevail. But
between these two extremes, there is a great deal of latitude,
and it is this variability that is of most interest to us. The
extent to which citizens believe that they ought to adhere
rigidly to law is one aspect of legal values, and it is quite
likely that nations differ significantly on this dimension.
The best indicator of attitudes toward the rule of law is the
third item: "If you don't particularly agree with law, it is all
right to break it if you are careful not to get caught." This is a
cynical statement that in essence cedes no moral authority
to law. According to this item, the most law-abiding people
are clearly the British—nearly 93% of the respondents
disagree or disagree strongly with the statement. Similarly,
in Italy, The Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark, West Germany,
Spain, and East Germany, we find widespread disapproval of
the idea that it is legitimate to break laws Conversely,
respect for law is lowest in France, Luxembourg, and
Belgium, where roughly one-quarter of the respondents
agree or agree strongly with the statement (Portugal follows
closely behind). There is certainly considerable crossnational variation within the EU in attitudes toward the rule
of law
There are comparable differences in perceptions of the
neutrality of law. In West Germany and The Netherlands,
more than 60% of the respondents reject the proposition that
"My interests are rarely represented in the law; usually law
reflects the views of those who want to control me." In
Denmark, a majority of the respondents also rejects the
statement; near majorities disagree with it in Great Britain,
Ireland, and France. On the other hand, a majority of the
respondents in Greece (and a near majority in Belgium)
view law as a repressive force. In all our countries, sizable
minorities, at least, assert that law reflects the interests of
those who would control them. Thus, these perhaps
surprising results suggest that belief in the neutrality of law
is not necessarily widespread in Europe and illustrate
significant cross-national variability.
Various people may well perceive the role of law in society in
quite different lights. This view of law as consensual and
neutral is common within a variety of types of legal
scholarship . Others, however, may perceive law as an
external, repressive, and coercive force. Instead of
embodying a broad social consensus to which nearly all
citizens subscribe, law may be seen as an instrument of
social control, as a means by which others advance their
contrary political interests. This view of law as an instrument
of political struggle, of political conflict, stands in sharp
contrast to the perception that law represents the consensual
interests of society. In the view that law in general represents
the interests of the entire society and that few will express a
fundamental alienation toward law and legal institutions.
Earlier research has argued that a basic distinction
among people is in their willingness to tolerate
disorder for the benefit of individual liberty. This
seems to be a basic social attitude, one stable
over time and closely associated with a variety of
other political beliefs. Moreover, struggles over
the extent of individual liberty constitute the
very heart of most legal systems. Those who
value liberty are more likely to favor the
universalistic application of the rule of law and
are less likely to view law as an instrument of
repression and social control.
the subdimension of legal values, we find much more
consensus. The best indicator of these attitudes—
responses to the statement "It is better to live in an
orderly society than to allow people so much
freedom that they can become disruptive"—does not
so clearly divide the countries of Europe as do the
other items. In fact, the citizens of most of the
countries endorse social order over potentially
disruptive liberty. More than three-quarters of the
respondents favor order in Portugal, Great Britain,
and Ireland (and perhaps Luxembourg and East
Germany as well). Only in The Netherlands, Italy, and
Spain do we find at least 20% of the respondents
expressing support for liberty on this item.
The change of social rules: time and
space
 Inseparable from modern state and
rational-legal bureaucratic authority
 Aberation or rule?
 Necessary for functioning
 New forms and areas of regulation:
conflict of interests, plutocracy, nepotism


[Sociology is ] ... the science whose object is to interpret the
meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of
the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it
produces. By 'action' in this definition is meant the human
behaviour when and to the extent the agent or agents see it as
subjectively meaningful

In neither case is the 'meaning' thought of as somehow objectively
'correct' or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This is the
difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as
sociology and history, and any kind of priori discipline, such as
jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract
from their subject-matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning.
 – Max Weber The Nature of Social Action 1922, [5]
The summary indicator of legal values suggests three major clusters of
countries within the EU. At one extreme we find Greece, Belgium,
Luxembourg, Portugal, and East Germany. These countries, regard for the
rule of law is not strong, support for individual liberty is weak, and
alienation from law is fairly common. Then, at the opposite end of the
continuum lie Denmark, The Netherlands, West Germany, and Great
Britain. The peoples of these countries tend to value individual liberty, to
support the rule of law, and to reject the proposition that law is an
external, repressive force. In the center, the cluster of Spain, Italy, France,
and Ireland, somewhat mixed views prevail. Although there are important
differences within these three clusters, we have some confidence that
beliefs about law differ across these three major groupings of countries*
The differences between the halves of the united Germany deserve special
attention. West Germans seem to look favorably on law, and are at least
somewhat positively oriented toward individual liberty. The East
Germans, contrariwise, tend not to view law as neutral, value liberty less,
and are not strong supporters of the rule of law. Like virtually all
elements of the "unified" German system, there are substantial
differences between East and West.
One of the biggest issues in any legal system is
compliance. Do citizens, organizations, and officials
obey the law? Do they obey in conflictual situations?
We do not have measures of the compliance or
noncompliance of individuals. But we do have data
on the compliance of European governments with
the treaties of the European Union. The transnational
character of the EU makes compliance an especially
salient issue; and, accordingly, the EU relies on a
number of procedures to bring about obedience to
European law. Together with the Court of Justice, the
European Commission serves as a bulwark of the
integrity of the treaties, working to ensure
compliance with the various forms of European law.
Durkheim's believed that crime is "bound up with the fundamental
conditions of all social life" and serves a social function.
He stated that crime implies, "not only that the way remains open to
necessary changes but that in certain cases it directly prepares
these changes.“
He saw crime as being able to release certain social tensions and so
have a cleansing or purging effect in society”
"the authority which the moral conscience enjoys must not be
excessive; otherwise, no-one would dare to criticize it, and it
would too easily congeal into an immutable form. To make
progress, individual originality must be able to express
itself...[even] the originality of the criminal... shall also be
possible".
There is no society that is not confronted with
the problem of criminality.Its forms
changes; the acts thuse characterized are
not the same everywhere;
What is normal simply, is the existence of
criminality, provided that it attaines and
does not exceed…
Crime is normal because a society exempt
from it is utterly impossible
Imagine a society of saints, a perfect cloister
of exemplary individual …It is impossible
for all to be alike…
Legal definitions are not contradictory to
each other. They are existing in pure
world of logical dependencies and
institutiond developed to overcome
possibble disharmony.
Real society is as living area of diaslectical
change
IS religion about ultimate reality?
Is economy retional calculation means to
an end?
Is law an aplication to the fact to the legal
proposition with acts of state as a
consequence?
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV4-
D-eTULY
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjTHL
i_kYVs&feature=related