Max Weber was a German sociologist who is considered a founding father of sociology and sociology of law. He developed a systematic analysis of different types of authority and their relation to law. According to Weber, there are three main types of legitimate authority: traditional authority based on long-standing tradition, charismatic authority stemming from an individual's charisma, and rational-legal authority based on a belief in the legality of rules and the rights of those in positions of authority. Weber's analysis of authority types and their relationship to law and social order had a profound influence on sociological theory and the study of law in society.

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The sociological school considers law as a social phenomenon and examines law in relation
to the society. The sociological foundations of law were given by the writing of Weber,
Durkheim and Ehrlich. Weber was the first to try to develop a systematic sociology of law.
More than that, he was the first to see the sociology of law as central to sociological theory.
Among the sociological classics, Max Weber is widely considered the founding father par
excellence of the modern sociology of law.
Weber while training as a lawyer; his earlier writings resemble those of the German
Historical School. He later reacted against this. His primary concern was to understand the
development and characteristics of Western Society, the most distinctive feature of which in
its developed form was capitalism. This led him in two directions: first, into historical and
comparative studies of the world's major civilizations; secondly, into studies of the origins of
capitalist development and 'rationalism'. The existence of rational legal order is a critical
feature of capitalist society.
While Savigny had laid down the base for social sciences for studying law in relation to its
socio‐cultural environment it were sociologist like Max Weber and Durkheim who insisted
on the study of law in terms of inter‐social needs and relations. They blended sociological
MAX WEBER'S
LEGAL THOUGHT & CONTRIBUTION
Short Biography:
In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. After a year of military service,
he transferred to the University of Berlin. Simultaneously with his studies, he worked as a junior lawyer.
In 1886 Weber passed the examination for Referendar, comparable to the bar association examination in
the British and American legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of law
and history. He earned his law doctorate in 1889. Weber joined the University of Berlin's faculty,
lecturing and consulting for the government. One year after his appointment at Berlin, he became a full
professor in political economy at Freiburg, and the following year (1896) he attained that position at
Heidelberg. In 1918, he became visiting professor at the University of Vienna and became a professor at
Munich University. In 1920, he suffered an attack of pneumonia and died in that year, when he was
hardly fifty‐six year of age. He is known for Weberian bureaucracy, Economy and Society, The
Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Disenchantment, Ideal type, Iron cage , Life chances,
Methodological individualism, Monopoly on violence, Rationalizations, Social action, Three‐component
stratification and Tripartite classification of authority etc.
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber
(21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920)
A German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist whose ideas
profoundly influenced social theory and social research. Weber is often
cited, with Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three
founders of Sociology.

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studies with legal theory defining law as one of the aspects of society. Max Weber's
Sociology of Law describes the development of law from its irrational nature to its rational
creation by specialists.
Weber evolved a view of legal development as characterized by systematic changes in the
legal order and in the growth of authority. In his publication Economy and Society
(published posthumously in Germany in 1922 by his wife Marianne), Weber emphasized that
the essence of social order is to be found in norms and the power to enforce them. The Law
can not be effective in the absence of power. By 'power' Weber has in mind the ability of
persons or institutions to affect the will and behavior of others by coercion or the threat of
such coercion.
Weber from his investigation of the legal history of society suggested three types of
'legitimate authority' (Traditional, Charismatic & Rational‐legal) each having its own special
attitudes to the concept of law and the purposes of legal institutions and procedures ‐"Law
is a 'legitimate Authority' of society.‐" Weber deeply studied about how power exercise in
society and how power obtains the legitimacy? (According to him when power obtains the
legitimacy that will be authority. Only authority can exercise the power in society) finally he
propounded the 'Theory of Authority'.
Weber’s Theory of Authority:
The influential sociologist Max Weber proposed a theory of authority that included three
types. He pioneered a path towards understanding how authority is legitimated as a belief
system. His essay “The three types of legitimate rule”, translated in English and published
posthumously in 1958.
Authority Types:
1. Traditional Authority:
Traditional authority is legitimated by the sanctity of tradition. The ability and right to rule
is passed down, often through heredity. It does not change overtime, does not facilitate
social change, tends to be irrational and inconsistent, and perpetuates the status quo.
In fact, Weber states: “The creation of new law opposite traditional norms is deemed
impossible in principle.” Traditional authority is typically embodied in feudalism or
patrimonialism. In a purely patriarchal structure, “the servants are completely and
personally dependent upon the lord”, while in an estate system (i.e. feudalism), “the servants
are not personal servants of the lord but independent men”. But, in both cases the system of
authority does not change or evolve.

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2. Charismatic Authority:
Charismatic authority is found in a leader whose mission and vision inspire others. It is
based upon the perceived extraordinary characteristics of an individual. Weber saw a
charismatic leader as the head of a new social movement, and one instilled with divine or
supernatural powers, such as a religious prophet. In a study of charisma and religion,
Riesebrodt (1999) argues that Weber also thought charisma played a strong (if not integral)
role in traditional authority systems. Thus, Weber’s favor for charismatic authority was
particularly strong, especially in focusing on what happened to it with the death or decline
of a charismatic leader. Charismatic authority is “routinized” in a number of ways according
to Weber: orders are traditionalized, the staff or followers change into legal or “estate‐like”
(traditional) staff, or the meaning of charisma itself may undergo change.
3. Legal‐rational Authority:
Legal‐rational authority is empowered by a formalistic belief in the content of the law (legal)
or natural law (rationality). Obedience is not given to a specific individual leader ‐ whether
traditional or charismatic ‐ but a set of uniform principles. Weber thought the best example
of legal‐rational authority was a bureaucracy (political or economic). This form of authority
is frequently found in the modern state, city governments, private and public corporations,
and various voluntary associations. In fact, Weber stated that the “development of the
modern state is identical indeed with that of modern officialdom and bureaucratic
organizations just as the development of modern capitalism is identical with the increasing
bureaucratization of economic enterprise.
However, no authority structure, Weber wrote, could actually be exclusively bureaucratic,
because some positions would be held by a variety of charismatic leaders. He also stated
that non‐bureaucratic legal authority could be found in organizations that have rotating
office holders, such as “Parliamentary and committee administration and all sorts of
collegiate and administrative bodies”. Weber’s feelings about bureaucracies sometimes came
through in his writing and he tended to view the move towards legal‐rational authority as a
move into an “Iron Cage”.
Weber further suggested that; legal system might be considered in terms of other rationality
and irrationality, a sub‐division would take into account the following substantial or formal
nature of legal procedures within the systems:
(a) Substantially Irrational System: Disputes tend to be decided upon their individual
merit. There is no set of general legal principles. Ad‐hoc and intuitive decisions
predominates.
(b) Formally Irrational System: Decisions depending on test such as ordeals, divine
judgment through ordeal by fire and water etc.

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(c) Substantially Rational System: Morality and law combined totally, theocratic
system. The revealed divine word is law. Justice is administered in the name of
divinity.
(d) Formally Rational System: Epitomized by codes of civil law derived from roman
classical law. The system seeks to apply the principles of logical consistence and
general nature to the construction of rational and impersonal norms.
Rules may be codified and sets of principles evolved which will assist in the solution of
all types of legal problems. Therefore the authority doesn't come from the economy
rather society itself determine the authority and legitimacy.
Interpretations and critical remarks on Weber's Theory of Authority:
Herbert Spencer:
Spencer interpreted Weber’s theory to say that legitimate order and authority stems from
“different aspects of a single phenomenon ‐ the forms that underlie all instances of ordered
human interaction”. There are two fundamental components of order, norms and authority.
Spencer explained that “authority and norms represent polar principles of social
organization: In the one case organization rests upon orientation to a rule or a principle; in
the other instance it is based upon compliance to commands”.
Randall Collins:
Collins observes that, for Weber, these categories of authority “do not exist merely for the
sake of labeling and classifying history; they are embedded in a larger network of concepts
and in an image of how they work”. As such, Weber’s three types of authority match up to
his three categories of inequality: class, status groups, and parties. Traditional authority is
the basis for status groups. Charismatic authority lends itself to a market scheme (such as
the potential for life chances), and Weber considered it to be the outcome of class. Finally,
parties are the codification of legal‐rational authority, especially in the case of
bureaucracies.
Lewis A. Coser:
Lewis A. Coser pointed out that Weber wrote about “pure” types of authority, and that “he
was aware that in empirical reality mixtures will be found in the legitimation of authority”.
As such, many examples of the following authority types may overlap.
Peter M. Blau:
Peter M. Blau’s “Critical Remarks on Weber’s Theory of Authority” (1963) explains two of
these in particular, components that either strengthen or weaken an authority type in

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regards to another. To elaborate, particular authority types can lose their power to ‐ and thus
transition into ‐ other types by some of the following ways. Revolutionary ideals can be
advocated by a charismatic leader or the rational pursuit of ends via abstract formal
principles can both weaken traditional authority. Revolutionary charismatic movements can
be crystallized into a traditional order or bureaucratized into a rational formal organization.
Finally, the irrational forces and powers of tradition or charisma can weaken legal‐rational
authority.
The three authority types may be re‐enforced by traits that differentiate them from other
types as;
Traditional authority‐ is impersonal (unlike charisma) and non‐rational (unlike legal‐rational).
Charismatic authority‐ is dynamic (unlike tradition) and non‐rational (unlike legal‐rational).
Finally,
Legal‐rational Authority‐ is dynamic (unlike tradition) and impersonal (unlike charisma).
Conversely, Blau means to say that traditional is un‐dynamic, charisma is personal, and
legal‐rational is rational. The likelihood of retaining a particular type of authority may
depend on the ability of that authority system to retain the traits that make it unique and
reject the traits that make it more conducive to another authority type.
Weber's Theory of Orientation of Social Actions:
Max Weber's book "Economy and Society (1922) had been listed as the most important
sociological book of the 20th century by the International Sociological Association in 1998.
In that book Weber has defined the term 'Sociology'...is a science concerning itself with the
interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its
course and consequences. We shall speak of "action" insofar as the acting individual
attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior... Social action, like all actions, may be
oriented in the following four ways:
Types of Instrumentally Value Rational Affectual Traditional
Action Rational
Action Based Rational action Action dictated Unreflective
on means‐ends in relation to a value by emotions & Passions or Habitual
calculation) Action
RATIONAL IRRATIONAL

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(1) Instrumentally rational (zweckrational), that is, determined by expectations as to the
behavior of objects in the environment and of other human beings; these expectations
are used as "conditions" or "means" for the attainment of the actor's own rationally
pursued and calculated ends;
(2) Value‐rational (wertrational), that is, determined by a conscious belief in the value for
its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behavior,
independently of its prospects of success;
(3) Affectual (especially emotional), that is, determined by the actor's specific affects and
feeling states;
(4) Traditional, that is, determined by ingrained habituation.
The Elements of Rationalization:
Rationalization would dominate through three procedures;
1. The control of the world through calculation and the collection and recording of
information.
2. The systematization of meaning and value into an overall consistent scheme.
3. The methodological living of daily life according to rules.
Rationality means following a rule, or an abstract moral principle, rather than acting on
impulse, randomness or emotionality. Rationality means building up a logically
consistent pattern linking our thoughts and actions and following this pattern to its
conclusion. It means commitment to consistency in linking our words and actions, our
aims and like activities; it entails creating an efficient ordering of means to ends.
As a consequence was faced an inevitable, systematization of belief, the elimination of
logical inconsistencies, the disarming of the magical and mystical, and a movement
away from peculiar or local pattern of thinking to more abstract or universal forms.
"To understand Law sociologically, Weber argues, we need to observe a pattern of action
and appreciate the subjective meaning of the actors involved in the action. We need both an
external and an internal perspective. Weber thus picks up Hegel's understanding that the
social relations of a given era provide internal criteria for the moral imperatives in force in
it, as well as the argument that the 'Content' of any moral judgment is fully revealed only in
understanding the context of the social network and determinations of actual social‐
historical situation. Our knowledge will therefore need to consider a duality; the internality
of action and the situation of that action within the vast picture of social development"

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Weber emphasized the peculiarly ' rational' quality of legal institutions in modern Western
societies. He saw law as passing through stages ranging from charismatic legal revelation
through what he called 'law prophets' to as ' systematic elaboration of law and
professionalized administration of justice by persons who have received their legal training
in a learned and formally logical manner'.
This applies also to Weber's ideas concerning types of irrationality and rationality that
characterize legal systems. Legal irrationality, that is a failure to be guided by general rules,
may be formal, as where decisions are determined by means beyond the control of reasoning
or substantive, where the decision‐ maker is guided only by reaction to the individual case.
A legal system exhibited substantive rationality when it was guided by principles albeit of an
ideological system other that that of the law itself, for example religion or justice.
Weber saw natural law in its revolutionary, rather that reactionary form. Its role was to
legitimate legal change and as such is necessary factor in the rationalization of law. It was
Weber thought, the absence of natural law which impeded the progress to rationalization of
both Chinese and Judaic law.
Weber's Sociology of Law has for its main theme the analysis of the transformation of law
from a "charismatic" finding of law to a state of rationalization. This transformation is
followed up in various legal phenomena in the gradual distinction of public from private law
which is however a distinction shifting with the development and principles of government.
In the evolution from the decision of individual cases to general principles and eventually a
systematization of law. In the development from the early formal status contract to the
elastic and formless purpose‐contract; from the autonomous legal personality of the middle
aged to the modern state monopoly of the creation of legal personality. All these are legal
developments closely linked with social, political and economic factors. Thus a development
of an exchange economy with its increasing use of money leads to the development to the
modern contract with its free assignability. The most interesting part of Weber's analysis is
concerned with the influence of legal professionalism and of different forms of political
government on the development of law.
Epilogue:
The theoretical conclusions which Weber derives from his comparative sociological
investigations are that law in general develops from a charismatic revelation by "prophets of
law" to an empirical creation and administration by a special class of legal advisors, further
to a law imposed by wordly or theocratic powers and eventually to a rationalize system of
law‐giving and professional administration of justice by experts. Correspondingly, legal
technique develops form magically rooted formalism through the utilitarian rationalization
sponsored by modern absolutist government towards the logical rationality of modern law.
When Weber observed that social life in the modern era had become more and more
rationalized in a purposive‐rational sense, he not only contemplated the central role of
economy, state, and bureaucracy, but along with it also discussed the role of law as the basis

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of modern political authority. Weber specifically outlined the characteristics of a formally
rationalized legal system that is primarily guided by the application of procedures. His
analysis of law is an intrinsic part of his sociology, in terms of both its perspective to the
study of society and its theoretical propositions on the conditions of modern society.
Weber's Sociology of Law reveals an approach which, without preconceived valuations, has
points of contact with Maine's Historical Jurisprudence on one hand and the Marxist
approach to law on the other. It demonstrates the interdependence of law with political,
economical and social forces.
Weber's theory seems incapable of embracing welfare state concepts and seems irreversibly
committed to a model of capitalism tied to laissez‐faire economies. Weber's theory has not
been able to express that; the laws would fail where the legal system was insufficiently
autonomous or legal reasoning insufficiently legalistic. However, Max Weber has made a
valuable contribution to Jurisprudence and earned for himself a remarkable place among the
influential sociological jurists.
References:
Freeman M.D.A.,( 6th ed, 1996), Lloyd's Introduction of Jurisprudence, Sweet and Maxwell
Ltd., London
Morrison, Wayne,( Reprint 1997), Jurisprudence: from Greeks to Post‐modernism,
Lawman (India) Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India
Friedmann, W.,( 5th ed, Reprint 2011), Legal Theory, Sweet and Maxwell Ltd., London
Dhyani S.N., (Reprint‐2011), Fundamental of Jurisprudence ‐ The Indian Approach,
Central Law Agency Allahabad, India
Mahajans V.D.,(Reprint‐2010), Jurisprudence & Legal Theory, Eastern Book company,
Locknow, India
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Max_Weber
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Max‐Weber‐German‐sociologist
http://danawilliams2.tripod.com/authority.html
http://www.slideshare.net/UNE_MOOC_Slides/max‐weber‐and‐the‐problem‐of‐irrationality