LGLS 4200U Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Change, Social Fact
Document Summary
Underlying assumption-law and social change are inter changeable on each other. How law impact social change and how social change can impact law. Historical transitions from feudal systems to industrialized systems. Civil rights movement wide scale change, horrendous crimes committed by particular colonial powers. Transitional social change when law is used to form an end goal. Social change can be considered in number of fields of thought and inquiry. Everything we do is mediated by social action; ideas, beliefs, actions, what we feel comfortable discussing. Law is interested in regulating behaviour and facilitating. Epistemology: study of knowledge, how we come to understand things. Law-understand fact and truth through legislation, judge based decisions, through legislative process which produces statutory law. Issue with instrumental approach to law is that it is flawed. Think about law in instrumental way, then law is not that important because law is a social phenomenon, but so is everything else-our relationships our feeling sand emotions.