The Concept of Norms in Sociology of Law

The aim of this article is to propose a method for creating a more coherent concept of norms – and to deliver a tentative and open suggestion on how to define norms in a way that might fit into the context of Sociology of Law (further on shortened, SoL). The idea is that the norm concept can be chiselled out through ontological analysis, and that this analysis can be conducted in a way that allow every aspects of the norm concept to be scrutinized separately. The result will in the best case scenario be a kind of ‘open source’ construction where every individual research project can formulate its view of the common concept. The suggested ontological analysis is mainly founded on The Aristotelian concepts of ‘essence’ and ‘accident’. Thus the method is concerned with distinguishing between norm attributes that lie in their (the norms’) nature (collectively they form the definition) and other attributes (that are essential for the categorisation of norms).