In his early life he was a member of the anti-Nazi resistance group XU, and while later involved on the radical wing of the Labour Party, he edited the newspaper Orientering.
[2] Vilhelm Aubert enrolled at the University of Oslo in 1940, the same year as Norway was invaded by Germany as a part of the Second World War.
He then lived in the United States for two years, studying sociology and psychology at Columbia and Berkeley.
Situated on its left wing, he co-published the pamphlet Tenk en gang til.
Some of the excluded members went on to found the Socialist People's Party,[citation needed] whereas Aubert left partisan politics to concentrate on an academic career.
[2][3] He took the doctor's degree in 1954, with the thesis Straffens sosiale funksjon (The Social Function of Punishment), which was also selected for the Norwegian Sociology Canon in 2009–2011.
[3] Books in the field of sociology of law include Likhet og rett (1963), Rettssosiologi (1968) and Rettens sosiale funksjon (1976).