Can Law Be An Agent Of Social Change?

. i This paper will deal with two kinds of change; change in broad social processes, such as the division of labor, and phange in law such as the importation of foreign codes as a replacement for religious law, in this case Moslem Sharia. The problem that this paper is meant to illuminate has to do with how the separation of spheres of changes for analytical purposes sometimes disturb the reaılty of the situation. While for anaıytical purposes we may separate social change from legal change, in fact we can not forget that the law is imbedded as part of the social process. Besides law, "all communities and societies acknowledge a mass of other rules of. conduct I-morality, custom etiquette, 'decent behavior'many of which carry informal, often automatic sMlctions". These rules "are not deriveci from laws; rather, rules normally becomle laws." (Stirling, 1957, 22). My main aim is to search if a law belonging to a completely differeht social structure can be an agent of social change when adop1Jedto function in another social structure. i