SOCIOLOGISTS AND THE LAW
Before proceeding with this review of the perspectives of the various academic disciplines, it might be helpful to briefly summarize the views of a leading scholar in the field of legal sociology, Edwin M. Schur, on the issue of why the study of law as a social phenomenon has been generally overlooked by sociologists.
Given the importance of law in social life and the existence of a distinctively 'legal' set of institutions, it is strange how little interest there has been in the field of legal sociology. Schur (1968, pp. 5-8) identifies four factors which contr…