THEORIZING THE RELATIVITY OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT ON THE BASIS OF LEGAL CAPITAL

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, University of Tehran

Abstract

Legal capital refers to the disciplinary spirit governing the relations among citizens within the frameworks defined by societies’ statutory and customary law. Based on the present view, any social development is meaningless within a society which lacks legal capital, i.e. legal capital is formed in societies where the rule of law is previously established. Therefore, rule of law indicates a successful transition from a natural state to a civil state. This paper is an attempt to examine the possibility of making social development relative to or dependent upon legal capital, and postulates that without legal capital any establishment of social development is unfounded and unreliable. The present article defines the concept of “legal capital” and explains the processes where, as an independent variable, it establishes and further institutionalizes social development in societies.

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