around 1900 max weber defined his "scientific" approach to law, identifying the "legal rational form" as a type of domination, not attributable to personal authority but to the authority of abstract norms. formal legal rationality was his term for the key characteristic of the kind of coherent and calculable law that was a precondition for modern political developments and the modern bureaucratic state. weber saw this law as having developed in parallel with the growth of capitalism. another leading sociologist, émile durkheim, wrote in his classic work "the division of labour in society" that as society becomes more complex, the body of civil law concerned primarily with restitution and compensation grows at the expense of criminal laws and penal sanctions. other notable early legal sociologists included hugo sinzheimer, theodor geiger, georges gurvitch and leon petrażycki in europe, and william graham sumner in the u.s.