In the sociology of law written by Mathieu Deflem, chapter seven, eight, and then deal with how the law is related to economy, politics, and culture. Both laws and culture have interactions and they influenced each other in one way or the other. Some cultures get incorporated into law while some laws made influence the cultural practices of people (Deflem 199). Depending on the relation to law, cultures can be classified into western and non-western cultures. The western culture mainly gets influenced by law meaning that legal principles influence the cultural practices of the western people. The non-western culture does not have written aspect in it but the culture mainly influences some laws that govern the people practicing such cultures (Deflem 204). Due to the western basing itself on legal perspectives, the culture follows the stipulated provisions of the law while the non-western culture does not follow any stipulated regulations.
There is also an interaction between law and politics because the political organ of governance is usually influenced by the legal provisions. The laws mainly apply to government officials, corporations, and unions of trade. There are laws that govern all political activities including elections and campaigns and governments have agencies that ensure implementation of the laws (Deflem 167). Law also interacts with economics because there are economics theories that interact with the law. The interpretation of the law in an economic perspective helps to identify the laws that can be economically viable or effective. The analysis of law in economic perspective can be useful in areas such as political science and political economics. In conclusion, all cultural law, legal economics, and political law interact to provide an extensive interpretation of the law (Deflem 148). All the three areas help to analyze law according to the situation at current.
In the fifth chapter of Invitation to Law and Society, the author, Kitty Calavita addresses situations where setups have two contrasting laws that may lead to confusion on the law that applies. The author uses an example of entry rules in a gym to show how legal pluralism exists between the two sets of governments. For example, there are federal tax laws that require all citizens to file returns to the Internal Revenue Service annually and the state governments also require people to file the same returns to the governments (Calavita 78). The two laws usually provide a conflicting nature leading to double taxation on the side of the Americans. There are other laws that have been developed that have led to a direct conflict among the two sets of government such as the legalization of marijuana. Other setups of the governments also rules out some laws that have been passed citing that the laws are unconstitutional (Calavita 84). These contradicting laws bring confusion among the public and the interpreters and they may lead to general confusion.
The conflicting laws have led to many people being affected such as the disabled and also the people seeking asylum. Recently, there have been many appeals from some section of the people especially the disabled just because the people did not feel that the law was interpreted correctly. The United States Social Security Administration is usually responsible for hearing the cases and the institution usually interprets the law using specific guidelines but the dissatisfaction of the disabled people means that they see the existence of provisions of other laws that may make the law go on their side (Calavita 87). The solution is the nullification of one law or to ensure that one of the laws is to be applied officially to avoid such conflicts. Through the method, people will have a common way of direction.
