THEORY OF LAW - LEGAL ETHNOGRAPHY OR THE THEORETICAL FRUITS OF INQUIRIES INTO LEGALLY RELEVANT FOLKWAYS

'Rechtliche Volkskunde' is distinguished from Legal Anthropology, and the latter from both Legal Ethnology and Legal Pluralism, as well as from the research on Aboriginal Law, claiming the first three to be law-related parts of non-legal disciplines, in contrast to 'Ethnologischer Jurisprudenz' and Anthropology of Law, taken as directions within the field of general jurisprudence itself. For the time being, neither the first has projected own theories nor Socio-ethnography has interfered with legal theorising, nurturing or challenging it. Since the realisation of Ehrlich and Weber on that laws may prevail independently of the states' 'Westphalian duo', a number of attempts at both extending and narrowing the law's usual covering has been tested. Considering the pendule movement between monism and pluralism in a historical perspective, renaming through reterming what is at stake as the object of research should not be a primary issue. As formulated by the author a quarter of a century ago 'Law is (1) a global phenomenon embracing society as a whole, (2) able to settle conflicts of interests that emerge in social practice as fundamental, while (3) prevailing as the supreme controlling factor in society'.