ABSTRACT
The relationship between law and the economy is a classic issue in the study of law and society. It is, for example, a central concern of Max Weber’s work on the sociology of law. To lawyers and jurists, law is what lawyers think about, study and write; and, to a lesser extent, what lawyers actually do for their clients. Of course, this way of looking at law tends to elide issues of culture and social context; and it puts law at the mercy of the habits and customs of legal education, or the particular scholarly tradition, say, in Germany or Japan. Legal scholars and theorists divide up bodies of law, conventionally, into various “fields.” An autonomous legal system would have no organic relationship to development, the economy, commerce, or the business world. The “mirror” concept seems to treat law in a rather passive, reactive way. Law is simply a dependent variable. No one can really resolve the argument over autonomy.
