ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the relationship between the two domains of society—the civil domain and the communal domain. The civil domain may be minuscule relative to society or nearly coterminous. Contemporary American society represents a point of extreme contrast to archaic German society. In the latter case, civil ties were few and thus the law hardly intruded at all into society. The relationship between the civil and communal domains and society as a whole, in important respects, is fairly straightforward. The more homogeneous the group of Persons who make up the civil domain, the smaller the civil domain will be relative to society as a whole. Where the size of the civil domain is large relative to a society’s population, by definition a great deal of life as it is played out between individuals is affected by the transformation of resources that the law provides.
