Law and Social Change

In this book Professor Friedmann applies the general approach to the study of law and society, developed in his Legal Theory, to some vital problems of contemporary jurisprudence. It is a comparative study, with frequent references to other common law systems and to continental law. But legal and social developments in Great Britain have furnished the starting point and most of the material used.In the present work the author takes the great social revolution of our times and shows its effect on the law. He diagnoses the ills which affect the new-born. Welfare State and points the way to the remedies. He does this, not by vague generalisations, but by discussing the new statutes and the new cases which together make up the new law, and seeing what is the policy which prompts them and what social purposes they fulfil.By doing this he opens up a new approach to legal problems. In former days lawyers used to think that they were not concerned with the social changes which went on around them. No matter how society changed, the law never changed. The law for them was fixed and constant, never to be altered except by Parliament: and the meaning of Parliament was only to be gathered from the literal sense of the words used, not from the social purpose that lay behind the words.The great merit of this book is that it shows us the pattern of legal development against its social background, and thus enables us to know what we are about. A craftsman always works better if he not only knows how to do this or that, but also why he does it.