91

‪At a time when social rights and the institution that is supposed to guarantee them, the welfare state, are in crisis, we propose to reexamine the evidence linking these contemporary phenomena and a certain tradition of French social thought dating back to the nineteenth century. How can we explain that Comte’s anti-juridism led a century later to a ‪‪Bill of Social Rights‪‪ (Gurvitch)? We argue that social rights and their state institutionalization should not be confused with the idea of social law, understood as the right that society holds over all its members. From Comte to Durkheim and the school of legal sociology, French social thought has sought to bring to light the distinct nature of the social, in relation to which law appears as a derivative dimension but by no means a secondary one.‪