Legal Structure

A concise introduction to the relationship between law and society aimed at the general reader and student. Written by the British legal scholar Michael D. A. Freeman and published as part of an Aspects of Modern Society series, the book steps back from the technical detail of particular statutes to ask how legal systems are organized and what social functions they perform. It examines the institutions and structures through which law operates in modern Britain, the place of the legal profession, and the ways legal rules both shape and are shaped by social life. Drawing on the tradition of sociological jurisprudence, it considers questions of law's authority, its role in regulating conduct and resolving disputes, and the tension between law as an instrument of order and as an arena of social change. Brief and accessible rather than exhaustive, the volume is designed to give newcomers a framework for thinking critically about legal institutions before they encounter the subject in more specialized study. It reflects the sociolegal concerns that would define much of Freeman's later career in jurisprudence.