Abstract

This major new textbook provides a clear and comprehensive guide to the sociology of law, surveying current theoretical debates and examining socio-legal research.

Exploring the relationship between the law and other aspects of social life, it goes beyond a discussion of contemporary institutions, focusing on broad and general patterns grounded in specific examples from a wide range of contexts. The book addresses: the social conditions under which laws emerge and are changed; the extent to which law can be a resource to implement social change; the kinds of values or world views that laws incorporate; and the ways in which laws shape social institutions and practices and vice versa.

Accessible and wide-ranging, Law and S
'Undoubtedly succeeds as a text... Its value as a text rests on its ability to integrate an accessible style with numerous examples from varied jurisdictions which students from both the legal and sociological disciplines will benefit enormously from. Accordingly, this book comes highly recommended' - International Journal of the Sociology of Law