Georges Gurvitch

Georges Gurvitch (Russian: Гео́ргий Дави́дович Гу́рвич; October 20, 1894, Novorossiysk – December 12, 1965, Paris) was a Russian-born French sociologist and jurist.

An outspoken advocate of Algerian decolonization, Gurvitch and his wife were the victim of a terrorist attack by the far-right nationalist group, L'O.A.S on June 22, 1962.

Like other legal sociologists, he insisted that law is not merely the rules or decisions produced, interpreted and enforced by agencies of the state, such as legislatures, courts and police.

Groups and communities of various kinds, whether formally structured or informally organised, produce regulation for themselves and others, which can properly be considered law from a sociological standpoint.

His Bill of Social Rights, drafted at the end of World War II was an attempt to state a blueprint of a legal framework of social law for a postwar world in which the idea of human rights had become newly powerful.