This course examines the interrelationship between law and society by focusing on the "law in action" versus the law "on the books." It will offer a broad introduction to the law as a social institution, and it will analyze how the law shapes the form and function of other key social institutions such as the family, the economy, and the state (politics). Specific substantive topics to be covered include theories of legal creation; types of legal systems; theories of social control and punishment; how laws are used to effect social change (the controversy over "judicial activism"); how racial and class inequalities in society affect the creation and administration of law; and how the work of key theorists in the discipline of sociology (primarily Marx, Weber, and Durkheim) have contributed to the field. There will be less emphasis on the content of law (i.e., legal doctrine and case law) than on the study of how laws represent and shape core societal values.