In this journal, I will be writing about the interaction between law and society, and the extent to which law impacts society and to what extent society affects the law. Also, I will discuss how the law is everywhere, what law is, how law influences society, and how society influences law. Fundamentally, the law pervades our lives and shapes both our sense of wrong or right and our behavior, mainly in ways that we do not know. However, as law dramatically impacts society, so too does society affect the law. As the law has an internal logic, characterized by the reasoning of judicial views, so it does have an external logic, as historical and social forces impact it. The law is established and practiced via societal processes. All together, the law affects and effects social change. In addition to a causal relationship, the law is additionally considered to comprise social institutions like family, corporation, property, polity, crime, and even the people. Overall, society and law are interconnected. Society would become a jungle without the law. Also, the law needs to be changed based on the societal changes, since without the changes required law may not keep pace with society.
The myth of the rule of law asserts that for a society to have peace and order, there should be a set of widely even, and neutral laws whereby the vast majority of the public agree are just and fair. The judicial system is based on the assumption that every individual is ruled by neutral laws which are objectively applied by judges. Nevertheless, as a myth, the concept of the rule of law is both dangerous and powerful. Its powers stem from its great emotional appeal. The rule of law proposes a lack of arbitrariness, a lack of the worst abuses of autocracy. The rule of law which the state imposes is just a myth. Legislative statutes are always subjected to the agendas and biases of the people who interpret them and are imposed in this way by whoever currently has the power in society.
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One of the theorists who has had a significant impact on society is Karl Marx. Marxist law is based on the premise that law and human rights emerge from the interactions of people with social structures which contain distinctions in economic class. Class divisions in societies create disorder and conflict, and thus law comes into play to address this conflict. The state that rises to uphold order within society propagates the conflict as a dominant class exerting power over classes which have less power. The state is a class domination organ, and organ of persecution of one class by another, its goal is creating the order that permits and propagates this oppression through regulating the conflicts between classes. Thus, the state imposes laws to quell such conflicts. In the Marxist interpretation of the law, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are two classes involved in the power struggle. Societies which allow the bourgeoisie to make moral decisions and create rules are unjust societies.
To sum up, the relationship between law and society could be understood through the concept of legal consciousness. The legal consciousness concept is used to state logically the meanings and understandings of law which circulates in social interactions. Legal consciousness denotes what people say and do about law. It is considered to be part of a reciprocal process whereby the meanings people give to their world become objectified, stabilized and patterned. These meanings, after they are institutionalized, turn out to be part of the discursive and material systems which constrain and limit future meaning-making. Legal consciousness is a form of social practice which reflects and forms social structures, and the way people understand and interpret the law is based on their legal consciousness.
