Unger’s Critical Legal Studies Under The Meaning Of Sociology

Unger regards the rule by law which is the most fundamental management pattern inmodern Western liberal society as the" legal order". The development of human society hasgenerated different social forms, and social changes also breed the developments of legaltypes. Getting help from Marx Weber’s method of “ideal type”, Unger divides the forms ofsociety which has appeared in the history of human into three types, namely, tribal society,the aristocratic society and liberal society; and three kinds of social forms accompanied withthree legal types, namely, the customary law, the bureaucratic law and legal order. Amongthem, the legal order whose universality and autonomy does not exist in the customary law andthe bureaucratic law is characteristic in the Western liberal society. This type of law has beenregarded as the most ideal mode of social governance by liberal legal theory which is themainstream in West, and been considered as the inevitable historical trend.However, Unger does not think so. He finds that the rule of law was not that the history’sinevitable result but completely an accidental combination of social multiplex interest groupwith the concept of natural law, deeply investigating social deep structure of the last stage inWestern European feudal society; Unger points out that the idea of the rule by law ispretended, exposing the conflict between the rank order of liberal society and social consensus.When the liberal society’s conflicts make the ideal of rule by law not be realistic, the welfareand the cooperative state is approached to resolve the problems of liberal society. But just thetwo from which a social mode can be called as the liberal society resulted to the disintegrationof the rule by law, the rule by law whose universality and autonomy were fundamentallydestroyed tends to die.Except the introduction, this paper is divided into five chapters. The first chapter brieflyintroduces the social background and theory origin of Unger’s social critical theory of law.The second chapter discusses the ideas of Unger’s social and legal types. The third chapterdiscusses the formation of the rule by law which is the critical object of Unger’s communityand legal theory. The fourth chapter discusses the false problem of the ideal of rule by law. Ina liberal society, because of the hierarchical order’s openness which is the social organizationstructure, as well as the collapse of the liberal consensus which is the social consciousnessmake the two hypotheses of social ideal of rule by law false, namely, the most important power must be centered on the government and the law can effectively restrain the power.The fifth chapter mainly discusses the changes of post liberal society which impact the rule bylaw. The contradictions of liberal society are inevitably to change the social mode, respondingto the people’s substantive equality, legal requirements, and liberal society will be graduallytransformed into a welfare-cooperative state. It is this change that makes the universality andautonomy requirements of the rule by law break up, and the rule by law is on the verge ofdeath or destruction, law will not be a law.