The following essay was the keynote delivered at the International Conference of the German Law & Society Association in Bremen, Germany, in March 2010. In seeking to understand the formation of the Association of the Sociology of Law it is important to be mindful of the context of the spirit of the 1960s and 1970s in which it arose. Sociology of law's beginnings can be traced to the start of the 20th century with especially Eugen Ehrlich, Max Weber, Hermann Kantorowicz, Arthur Nußbaum and Theodor Geiger. However, after nearly being wiped out under German National Socialism, it began to re-emerge slightly in the 1960s.