Legal Contributions to the
Structure of Civil Society

By Per Stjernquist
November 2004
Almqvist & Wiksell
ISBN: 9122020667
48 pages, 6 ½" x 9 ¼"
$52.50 Paper Original


The role of the legal order in social life is one of the main problem fields of sociology of law. The treatment of these problems is hampered by the usage to start out from the legal side of the relation. The studies have consequently resulted in accounts of public policy or of the effectivity of particular legal acts.

These results do not explain the problem field in question. In order to explain what law means to social life it is necessary to start out from the social side of the relation, that is from social society as a whole or from a specific process going on there. The present study tries to explain the importance of the legal order to the organization of social society as a whole in modern time.

For that reason it had to form a theoretical model of civil society. Civil society is seen to be structured of the network of organized cooperative interrelations in social life. The relations are concentrated into concrete entities of cooperation as associations and companies which produce patterns of conduct for the participants.

Law; Sociology
Studier Utgivna av Kungl. Humanistika
Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund 2001-2002:2

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