Law and justice in the society of economic inequality

Abstract

In a comprehensive analysis of the concept of legal culture, legal systems are influenced by the impact of social forces. From the socio-legal perspective, the law reflects the morphology of existing social relations. If it is true that today’s society is characterized by forms of increasing economic inequality. In that case the parallel crisis of the State determines the weakening of the forms of intervention aimed at realizing social justice. In the contemporary age, collective decisions are the result of democratic procedures and the legitimate forms of intervention are realized through state law. However today there is a tendency to replace the classic parameter of social justice with that of economic efficiency, while forms of social reaction to the growth of inequality seem to be absent. Furthermore, the law has so far shown a certain weakness with respect to the economy: through a process of “juridification”, the juridical space has been used as an “infrastructure” to instrumentally spread the economic method. The law, therefore, risks being the product of a society in which political power does not exist by itself but is only a function of economic power.