ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the argument put forward by Alice Ehr-Soon Tay and Eugene Kamenka, a lawyer and a philosopher; the other argument by the sociologist and philosopher Jurgen Habermas. Tay and Kamenka are better at providing an account of the alleged crisis in law than they are at explaining how this is related to changes in society. The chapter suggests that, far from being in crisis, legal institutions and concepts help to prevent the emergence of a social crisis by playing an important role in preventing wider recognition of significant social changes which might otherwise be perceived as threatening. It shows that how law can avoid being caught up and shaped in the image of social developments and changing social relations and also suggests that it may play a special role even when it does become involved in such developements.
