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Law and Society - Summary of Chapter 7

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Law and Society - Summary of Chapter 7
Summary of Chapter 7: Law and Social Change

In the development of Legal Institutions, law and society theorists have been trying to correlate it with legal and social change. Later after several studies they viewed that law as an independent and dependent variable in the society’s system. First of all what needs to be understand is the term change that used in “social change”. The social change in this term is refers to changes in society. Society is a complex network of patterns of relationships in which all the members participate in varying degrees. These relationship change and behaviors changes at the same time. Individuals that are inside the society are faced with new situations to which they must respond. Thus, social change means modification in the way of people’s lives. Social change is the effect of various factors in the interrelationships among them (individuals). In addition to law and legal cultures, there are a lot of changes in mechanism to trigger a social change such as technology, ideology, competition, conflict, political, and economic factors.
Reciprocity between Law and Social Change
The argumentation whether law can be or should be the lead in the society always been a conflicting issue to discuss back then. At the beginning of industrialization and urbanization in Europe, the British social reformer, Jeremy Bentham forced legal forms to respond quickly to new social needs and to restructure society. Later on, he also gave advice to the leaders of the French Revolution because he believed that countries at a similar age of economic development needed similar review for common problem. It was in fact it is his idea to turn the British Parliament and similar institutions in other countries into active legislative instruments bringing about partly of the society to stipulate the social needs in the law.
Two centuries afterward, the relationship between law and social change remain controversial. There are two contrast views on legal

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