ABSTRACT
The 19th century witnessed the birth ofa new science of society; sociology. The problem sociology focused on was modem society, what was distinctive about it and the factors which could explain its emergence. The classic figures of sociology, such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, stressed the role of the law in both creating and guaranteeing the conditions for modem society. In Marx's theory of capitalism, the law played the role of necessary mediating form in the circulation process of the capital; for Durkheim, the law maintained the organic solidarity of modem society, based on the division of labour; and, in Weber's view, formal rational law procured the predictability and calculability without which neither the capitalist market economy nor bureaucratic administration could function. As regards contemporary social theory, JUrgen Habermas is perhaps the most conspicuous example of those theorists who have continued to follow the path indicated by the classics and who have analysed the specific impact the law has had in the birth and reproduction of modem society.
