law, sociology of
law, sociology ofLaw—rules of action or statutes established by authorities such as states—was a central object of theoretical and substantive concern to each of the founding figures of sociology.
Although Karl Marx did not write a systematic treatise on law, he nevertheless had much to say about it (see M. Cain and A. Hunt, Marx and Engels on Law, 1979), including two points which were particularly influential in subsequent studies. The first was that, because the legal system is part of the bourgeois state, it was an instrument of class oppression. The second was that, because ‘the ruling ideas of a period are the ideas of the ruling class’, even the most basic of legal concepts (most famously ‘rights’) are part of the system of bourgeois domination.
Émile Durkheim likewise did not write a treatise that was specifically...
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