ABSTRACT
Karl renner's work on the Institutions of Private Law and their Social Function is an attempt to utilise the Marxist system of sociology for the construction of a theory of law. Renner's work is concerned with the sociology of law, and, more particularly, with the impact of economic forces and social changes upon the functioning of legal institutions. It is one of the tasks of a sociology of law to explore the social forces which bring about the creation of legal norms and institutions and changes in the positive law. No consistent positivist can ever admit that the normative content of legal institutions can be influenced by their function, by the factual results of their application. Since the positivist assumption is one of the cornerstones of this analysis, it is useful to reflect on the question how far the structure of the Anglo-American common law precludes an application of the positivist doctrine.
