ABSTRACT
Max Weber focuses his interest in the Sociology of Law on the processes of rationalization that foster the logical coherence and systematization of law. Abstract features of Continental European law represent for Weber the archetype of a formally rational legal order, with its fundamental structure characterized by logical coherence and systematization. The relationship between sacred and secular law renders legal coherence highly problematic: with many institutions of sacred law not being adapted to modern life, secular law rules in fact most current situations. The tension between formal and substantive rationality appears in all its complexity in the Weberian analysis of contemporary law. In his Rechtssoziologie, Weber does not expand much on the theme – central for religious sociology – of an internal developmental logic of legal representations and images of the world, able to significantly orient the rationalization of law.
