Sociology of law is a branch of legal science which provides an external perspective on law and the legal system. The approach has both scientific and practical consequences for the study of law. The external perspective leads the scholar to raise other than dogmatic questions about the proper application of law in different situations. Noticeable is also that there is a distinction between sociology of law and socio-legal studies or legal sociology. In the socio-legal perspective the sociological part seeks merely to contribute to an understanding of law on its own terms. Legal sociology has thus been labelled an auxiliary science to legal science. Sociology of law, on the other hand, claims to be an academic subject in its own right.
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