ABSTRACT
The contention here is that the pure, systematic analyses of law as a closed system carried out by most branches of jurisprudence can never produce a full understanding of the law because they do not take account of the social environment within which legal institutions exist. The fields of sociological jurisprudence, socio-legal studies and the sociology of law are distinct, though related, approaches to the investigation of the relationship between law and other social phenomena. The main link between them is to be found in the belief of scholars working within these schools of thought, in the role that a study of the workings of the various elements of society as a whole or specific combinations of them under certain circumstances has to play in the understanding of the more specific operations of the law as a distinct social phenomenon. The particular differences between these schools of thought are to be found in an analysis of the main social issues which they seek to investigate, and the approaches which they take in relating studies on the law to these issues.
