As the societies grew from closed homogenous social groups into complex heterogenous communities, the necessity for an organized institution that would manage the various interactions within it also increased. Social diversity, the impossibility of direct interaction between all of the members and aspects of a community, as well as miscellaneous values, views and behavior patterns, create a demand of an institutionalized method of social control (Vago, 2017). Within modern societies, law serves as a formal method of social control, which guides the members of this society in their behavioral patterns and ways of interaction with others.
However, law only specifies the rules and clarifies the sanctions for not obeying them and does not necessarily indicate on what is morally and ethically right or wrong. Legal systems differ in different countries: case in point, in Saudi Arabia it is illegal for women to wear tightfitting or see-through and generally revealing clothing. Positivistic approach to law can explain such drastic differences in various legal systems. One of the major representatives of the positivist approach to law, H.L.A. Hart, claimed that law is totally socially constructed (Hart, 2012). According to this approach, the law is separable from morality, therefore does not indicate what is ethically right or wrong (Hart, 2012). Law is constructed by some person or a group of people who intentionally or accidentally artificially created a norm that ultimately became law.
The law was created to serve an integral role of restraining the society from sinking into chaos by binding different and often remote facets of society. However, it is essential to keep in mind that law’s function of a moral compass is intrinsically controversial. Although sometimes it does reflect the group’s moral values, its creation is conditioned by a need to check and balance the parties of society that happened to have a disagreement.
References
Hart, H. (2012). The Concept of Law. OUP Oxford.
Vago, S., Nelson, A., Nelson, V., & Barkan, S.E. (2017). Law and Society: Canadian Edition (5th ed.). Routledge.