The Sociology of Law has its contributors like Max Weber and Karl Renner, amongst many

other distinguished contributors, including Emile Durkheim.

According to Weber there are various different forms of justice delivery or legal decisions
that are after all influenced by traditions and social norms. Furthermore, he said many legal
systems are based on an irrational development of case laws, which is derived from precedent
and administers by a highly developed yet limited field of lawyers and jurists. He conveys
how intrinsically linked values and societal norms are to law.

Karl Renner, 'The institutions of Private law and their social functions,' talks about how the
functions of legal norms which deals in regulating property, succession and inheritance,
contract change with changes in the economic structure of capitalist society, yet without
necessarily changing the formulation of the legal norms themselves which thus come to
obscure the significant social relationships of developed capitalism. 

Durkheim emphasised on the role of history in changing the nature of law and its application.
This is because of the expected variation of values of society with respect to individual rights
and responsibilities. The Division of Labour in Society by Durkheim comments on this.

The Sociology of Law is mainly focused on understanding legal mechanisms and legal
practice, and while doing so it establishes the foundation of jurisprudence.  The field deals in
specific matters and helps learning through both the theoretical and practical sense by
offering a more nuanced and enriched analysis. It draws on social theories and employs social
scientific methods to study law, legal institutions and legal behaviour. Whether the sociology
of law is defined as a sub-discipline of sociology, a field of research in its claim or, an
approach within legal studies, it remains intellectually dependent mainly on mainstream
sociology, and to lesser extent on other social sciences like cultural anthropology , politics ,
policy , criminology and psychology, i.e. it draws on social theories and employs social
scientific methods to review law, legal institutions and legal behaviour. Sociology of law also
benefits from and occasionally draws on research conducted within other fields such as legal
theory, comparative law, jurisprudence, law and literature, law and economics and critical
legal studies.

The Sociology of Law has eluded scholars and practitioners to date for a clear and concise
definition .And this fact affect the authority of this theory.

It is important to critically analyse the positive and negative impact of law on race, class,
gender and various social values. Sociology of Law in the Indian context is a new
interdisciplinary area that has emerged within the sociological jurisprudence in the recent past
due to scholarly inputs through various researches and projects. Sociology of Law as a
research area in the Indian context is small, but is developing at a very fast pace. 

For example: The practice of Sati, in ancient time women would commit suicide after their
husband’s death, to be precise in a battle if the men die and lose ,the women would be at the
mercy of the winner, so this was a tradition that became a cultural norm and it was committed
till the British rule in India. It might be necessary at the time of its origin but later it became a
forces ritual that turned into killing women forcefully by the society. This act was
unnecessary in modern time as there are authorities that can protect women after their
husband’s death and so there was revolution in India against this tradition and there are firm
laws against it.

The society has accepted these laws as it’s rational to stop such inhuman act of burning
someone alive. Hence there was a evolution in law in accordance with society and social
needs.