Leon Petrazycki

Leon Petrażycki ( Лев Иосифович Петражицкий; * April 13, 1867, † May 15, 1931 ) was a Polish philosopher, lawyer and sociologist. He is considered the founder of the Sociology of Law in Eastern Europe.

Life

Leon Petrażycki was born in Vitebsk region in the Russian Empire in the Polish nobility. He graduated from the University of Kiev in 1890 from spent with a scholarship two years in Berlin and received his doctorate in 1896 at the University of St. Petersburg. There he taught from 1897 to 1917 as a professor of philosophy of law.

In 1906 Petrażycki was elected as a member of the Constitutional Democrats in the First Duma. When the legislature was dissolved after a few months, he was convicted and imprisoned for his protests. Petrażycki was appointed in 1917 to the Supreme Court of Russia, but had to leave the country after the October Revolution. He found a new home in Poland and became in 1919 the first professor of sociology at the University of Warsaw. In 1931 Petrażycki committed suicide.