ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces structural-functionalism by presenting a few of its key concepts and examines the legal system’s social functions. It shows that the law’s principal function is that of integration through social control and looks at the legal system as an autopoietic unit, or as a coherent entity that reproduces itself, regulates itself, and refers to itself. Structural-functionalism was the preeminent sociological paradigm during the 1940s and 1950s. Structural-functionalism sees society as a system made up of differentiated and interrelated structures. Structural-functionalists take a holistic view of society. The chapter focuses on Robert K. Merton’s concepts of manifest and latent functions and dysfunctions, and Talcott Parsons’s elaboration of the concept of the social system. Merton’s concepts of manifest and latent, functions and dysfunctions alert us to the fact that the consequences of social structures may be intended or unintended, positive or negative.
