Making sense of the law. Lawyers and legal philosophy

It is surprising that social philosophers and sociologists feel able to offer explanations of society which do not assign a central place to law. It is surprising that legal philosophers and lawyers can speak about law as if legal phenomena were self-contained and capable of being isolated from social phenomena in general.

Law seems to have a special status among social phenomena by reason of its forms, its rituals, its specialised language, its special rationality even, and its specific social effects. But, on the other hand, law is clearly embedded in the totality of the social process which is its cause, and on which it has a substantial determinative effect, not least in providing the continuing structure of society, its hardware programme.

Legal philosophy is law's own self-philosophising, another closed world, familiar to some lawyers, more or less unknown to general philosophers and social scientists.

The emerging universal legal system. The law of all laws

Law is a universal social phenomenon – or, rather, legal systems seem to be, and to have been, a characteristic feature of social organisation. The ancient debate about whether law is a single generic phenomenon with countless local specific forms has never been resolved. That debate is now being overtaken by new real-world developments.

National legal systems are beginning to merge as a result of forces acting from two directions. On the one hand, there is a dramatic increase in international legislation and collective government, including socially sensitive law (international human rights law), socially transformatory law (international economic law and administration), and socially structural law (international public order law).[…]