ABSTRACT
Some parts of the law are called ‘social’. There is ‘social law’ in general, social security law and even social private law. Within the European Community one speaks of ‘the social dimension’ in opposition to the ‘economic dimension’. Everybody has an approximate idea as to which rules the expressions refer. The word evokes associations to rules ameliorating the conditions for exposed groups and to political movements like social democracy and socialism. But the question remains; why are these rules more ‘social’ than other rules. Are all legal rules not social, have they not all emerged in a social process and do they not all constitute a certain kind of social conventions?
