To use its own unique imagery the behavior of law aims at mapping out social space and showing the location and direction of law within this space its propositions will provide a skeleton to be fleshed out with the results of future research it may well contain the theory that sociologists of law and perhaps even students of sociology in general have been waiting for in any case it will . The behavior of law donald black emerald group publishing jul 15 2010 law 220 pages 2 reviews hailed as one of the most important works in the history of sociology and a precursor to the revolutionary theoretical approach of pure sociology this short and lucid book is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1976. The behavior of law special editionbingley uk emerald group publishing ltd 2010 by donald black creative work requires a willingness to take risks and i felt at the time and still do that i would rather fail at something very important and challenging than succeed at something more pedestrian and manageable. The behavior of law was to show sociologists the high degree of simplicity achievable in falsifiable theory at a level of generality hardly imaginable before it appeared compare the tangled jungles of verbiage so often produced by modern theoretical sociologists such as talcott parsons niklas luhmann and anthony giddens leaving aside the largely untestable character of their work p