Law: history of its relation to the social sciences

This section first considers a number of problems of definition which arise in relation to the terms law and legal science. The implications of two broad images of law—law as legislation, law as adjudication—are explored in order to sharpen the focus of the question of the relationship between law and the social sciences. Three specific aspects of that relationship are then discussed: (a) the relationship between law and legal theory and social theory; (b) the relationship of law to the interpretive and/or phenomenological branches of the social sciences; and (c) the relationship of law to the empirical or positivistic branches of the social sciences. In each case, the influence of law upon the development of the social sciences, and the limits of these influences, is considered.