Law and Society

Volledige vakbeschrijving

Legal scholars generally focus their attention on the law as it appears in books. They look at formal manifestations of the law, such as constitutions, statutes, legal rulings and court structures. While this is certainly an important aspect of studying law, we would miss quite a lot if we limited our attention to the formal structures of law, and ignored the larger society in which law functions. While law in action bears some resemblance to law in books, law as a social phenomenon is often far more complex than is apparent from the formal manifestations of law alone. This course looks at the law in action: it studies law as a social phenomenon. Only when we understand how the major elements of a legal system function together in a specific social context, can we really understand how law affects society and how society in turn shapes law. The first part of the course will introduce the sociological study of law. We will give an overview of the field, discuss several prominent theoretical approaches and examine various methods of researching socio-legal questions. The second part of the course will examine several legal processes in detail, using the tools that were developed in the first half of the course. In particular, we will look at the organization of law, the making of law, law as a means of social control, dispute resolution and law as a means of social change.