Law from the perspective of  
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory1  
Matías Castro de Achával*  
mn  
El derecho a partir de la  
teoría de Pierre Bourdieu  
Abstract  
The present work deals with an analysis of relevant aspects of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory in  
relation to the understanding of Law, proposing the problematization of certain notions, and  
a dialogue from the work of this author with perspectives of authors such as Kelsen, Weber  
and Marx. Finally, the importance of Bourdieu’s proposal is postulated, both as a framework  
for theoretical analysis related to the legal, as well as a relevant tool for understanding legal  
practices.  
Keywords: Pierre Bourdieu; Socio-legal theory; Law.  
1
*
Originally published in Spanish, in Sortuz. Oñati Journal of Emergent Socio-legal Studies,  
vol. 14, n.° 1, 2024, pp. 95-109.  
Lawyer, Bachelor of Philosophy, Doctor of Law and Social Sciences (Universidad Nacional  
de Córdoba, Argentina), Postdoctoral studies in Legal Sociology and Philosophy of Law  
(Universidad del Salento, Italia). Regular professor and researcher Universidad Nacional  
de Santiago del Estero (Argentina). President of the Argentine Society of Legal Sociology;  
e-mail [castrodeachaval@gmail.com], orcid [https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8341-1428].  
Nuevos Paradigmas de las Ciencias Sociales Latinoamericanas  
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Matías Castro de Achával  
Resumen  
El presente trabajo aborda un análisis de aspectos relevantes de la teoría de Pierre Bourdieu  
en relación a la comprensión del Derecho, proponiendo la problematización de ciertas nocio-  
nes, y un diálogo desde la obra de este autor con perspectivas de autores como Kelsen, Weber  
y Marx. Se postula, finalmente, la importancia de la propuesta de Bourdieu tanto como marco  
de formación y análisis teóricos relativos a lo jurídico, así como una relevante herramienta de  
compresión de las prácticas jurídicas.  
Palabras clave: Pierre Bourdieu; Teoría socio jurídica; Derecho.  
Fecha de presentación: 24 de marzo de 2025. Revisión: 18 de abril de 2025. Fecha de aceptación:  
27 de mayo de 2025.  
ef  
Far from being a mere ideological mask, this rhetoric of autonomy, neutrality,  
and universality, which can be the beginning of a real autonomy of thought  
and practice, is the very expression of the entire functioning of the legal field  
and, in particular, of the work of rationalization in the dual sense of Freud and Weber,  
to which the system of legal norms has been continuously subjected for centuries.  
Pierre Bourdieu2  
I. Introduction  
Law usually appears as an autonomous phenomenon, distinct from  
all other social, political, or economic phenomena. Legal discourse,  
monopolized by legal actors—lawyers, judges, jurists—generally  
presents itself as a hermetic, complete, and closed discourse, and the  
knowledge produced by legal science as knowledge for initiates, un-  
suitable for the average citizen.  
Legal science was constructed on the premises of autonomy, neu-  
trality, and universality, as a pure science with little connection to so-  
cial experience. Legal professionals themselves, from their very train-  
ing, acquire and reproduce this conception not only in their discourse  
but also as a guide for their practices.  
One of the most relevant characteristics of Law, as Roger  
Cotterrell3 pointed out, is that, despite the fundamental role it  
plays in society, legal experience presents itself as isolated from other  
2
3
Poder, derecho y clases sociales, Bilbao, Desclée de Brouwer, 2001, p. 174.  
Introducción a la Sociología del Derecho, Barcelona, Ariel, 1991.  
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social factors, which in turn aims to justify the supposed professional  
autonomy of legal agents, who see themselves as the legitimate pro-  
ducers of legal discourse.  
The monopoly on this discourse held by legal professionals, un-  
derstood as a systematic body of knowledge difficult for the uninitiat-  
ed to access, allows the legal field an apparent self-sufficiency and in-  
dependence from the social body in which it operates. This apparent  
self-sufficiency is maintained by the legal professionals themselves,  
who present arguments isolated from other social phenomena, seeing  
themselves as the legitimate producers of legal discourse.  
Pierre Bourdieu proposes a theory that links the legal with the  
social, providing new dimensions to the analysis of law and the un-  
derstanding of legal practices. Bourdieu’s theory has been defined  
by Moishe Postone et al.4 as an attempt to overcome the traditional  
dichotomies of the social sciences, allowing for a reflexive approach  
to the social. In Bourdieu’s analytical perspective, a distinction is  
made between “the construction of concepts and the development of  
an original logic of operation that allows us to explain and understand  
social phenomena”5, including law.  
For Bourdieu, social practices are understood as a relationship  
between agents within a specific field, where diverse habitus influ-  
ence the configuration of the actors them-selves, and where specific  
forms of capital are at play. In this sense, the notion of field enables  
the approach to the social from a relational perspective, with the  
methodo-logical aim of overcoming the subjectivism-objectivism di-  
chotomy. “To think in terms of the social field is to think relationally”,  
that is, to understand the social as a world of observable relations;  
“what exists in the social world are relations—not subjective interac-  
tions or links between agents, but objective relations that exist inde-  
pendently of individual consciousness”6.  
The concept of field also allows for the identification of the con-  
figurations of the agents themselves, since their positions within the  
4
Moishe Postone, Edward LiPuma & Craig Calhoun. “Introduction: Bourdieu and Social  
Theory”, in Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma & Moishe Postone (eds.). Bourdieu: Critical  
Perspectives, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993, p. 3.  
5
Alicia B. Gutiérrez. Las prácticas sociales. Una introducción a Pierre Bourdieu, Villa  
María, Eduvim, 2012, p. 17.  
6
Pierre Bourdieu & Loïc J. D. Wacquant. Respuestas. Por una antropología reflexiva,  
México D. F., Grijalbo, 1995, pp. 71-72.  
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field are what define them socially. For Bourdieu, belonging to a field,  
and the position one occupies within it, implies properties that, al-  
though not “natural”, are incorporated as such by the agents (natural-  
ized) through habitus. As Alicia Gutiérrez states, “a field consists  
of a set of objective relations between historically defined positions,  
while habitus takes the form of a set of historical relations incorpo-  
rated into social agents”7.  
Applied to the study of legal practices, Bourdieu’s theory allows  
us to explain the configurations of the legal field by considering the  
relationships between the various agents (legal actors), their specific  
habitus, and their specific capital. Within the legal field, it becomes  
possible to discern a process of struggle among these agents for the  
monopoly of legal discourse—that is, for the socially recognized ca-  
pacity to interpret legal texts that embody the legitimate vision of the  
social world.  
This paper offers a concise analysis of Bourdieu’s theory as ap-  
plied to law, exploring key concepts derived from it and their rela-  
tionship to law, thereby enriching legal and social analysis. We will  
also engage in dialogue between Bourdieu’s conception and those of  
other thinkers such as Hans Kelsen and Max Weber, and compare  
his position with the views of materialist authors like Karl Marx, ul-  
timately asserting the enduring importance of Bourdieu’s proposal  
not only in terms of academic training and theoretical analysis of law,  
but also as a tool for understanding legal practices.  
II. Law for Bordieu  
Law, in general, is often viewed as a phenomenon isolated from other  
social phenomena. For the vast majority of jurists and legal professio-  
nals, it is an autonomous field, independent of the social context in  
which it develops. From this perspective, legal discourse is monopo-  
lized by the initiated, actors trained in a legal technique that is often  
incomprehensible to the layperson.  
Many legal professionals share this perspective, and the class-  
rooms of Law Schools and Faculties generally train professionals un-  
der an apparent disciplinary autonomy, manifested in esoteric knowl-  
7
Gutiérrez. Las prácticas sociales. Una introducción a Pierre Bourdieu, cit., p. 32.  
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edge and in a technical language that is not very accessible to the  
average citizen.  
Thelegalsphereisthusrevealedasaspacedistinctfromthesocial  
sphere, as an area populated by norms that have nothing to do with  
the social, political, economic, and cultural vicissitudes of the peoples,  
groups, or individuals who dictate them. However, as Renato Treves8  
stated, since antiquity various thinkers have reflected on the relation-  
ship between law and society. With the emergence of the modern  
state and modern legal conceptions, theories attempting to explain  
the relationship between law and society acquired a new dimension,  
recognizing the former as a social phenomenon, inextricably linked to  
other cultural, political, and economic aspects that govern human life.  
This intensified with the emergence of Sociology as a scientific disci-  
pline, transforming Law into another factor in explaining social reality –al-  
though the academic field of Law often remained detached from this perspec-  
tive– which does not imply failing to recognize the need for legal theories that  
account for Law, but rather understanding that these theories are produced  
and must be inserted in a broader context.  
Bourdieu’s interest lies primarily in the study of the social in its  
various manifestations. He does not have a specific interest in law, al-  
though he recognizes the importance of this dimension in social prac-  
tices. It is clear that for Bourdieu, norms and law play an important  
role in social practices, a point that is generally evident in his work.  
However, he rarely addresses the analysis of the legal field specifically  
in his extensive body of work9.  
In this text, Bourdieu begins by defining a “science of law” that  
takes “legal science” as its object of study, thus separating the author’s  
approach from the dichotomy between formalism—which, following  
Weber, we can also call internalism—“which affirms the absolute au-  
tonomy of the legal form in relation to the social world” and instru-  
mentalism—or externalism in Weberian terms—”which conceives of  
law as a reflection or a tool at the service of the dominant”10.  
Thus, Bourdieu’s distance becomes clear, on the one hand, from  
positions that establish the possibility of an autonomous analysis of  
8
9
Introducción a la Sociología del Derecho, Barcelona, Taurus, 1985, p. 21.  
As is clearly the case with his book Poder, derecho y clases sociales, Bilbao, Desclée de  
Brouwer, 2001.  
10 Ibid., p. 165.  
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law, without considering social aspects, finding perhaps the most ex-  
treme example in Kelsen, in his attempt to construct a pure theory of  
law. Recall that Kelsen sought to generate a pure theory of law, one  
that would become a true normative science, and would detach law  
from other aspects such as politics. In the preface to the 1934 German  
edition of his Pure Theory of Law, Kelsen maintains that his intention  
was “to elaborate a pure theory of law, that is to say, a theory purged  
of all political ideology and all elements of the natural sciences, and  
conscious of having an object governed by its own laws”11.  
There, the author stands out whose contribution was perhaps  
the most significant, and most criticized, to separate the legal and po-  
litical spheres, a separation that his adversaries did not want to admit  
Since they do not want to give up the rather ingrained habit of invoking the  
objective authority of legal science to justify political claims that have an es-  
sentially subjective character, even when in all good faith they correspond to  
the ideal of a religion, a nation or a class12.  
Kelsen clarifies that a science of this nature should only focus on Law  
and not on everything that exceeds its definition, eliminating from  
its object of study and its method the elements that are foreign to it,  
among which he places social aspects, for example, or even substan-  
tial aspects concerning the normative content that each legal system  
might contain.  
By distinguishing between the science of law and the sociology  
of law, Kelsen views law as a normative system, an organized set of  
legal norms, thus distancing himself from those who see law as “a  
means of creating in the minds of men certain representations strong  
enough to provoke the desired conduct”13. For Kelsen, the sociology  
of law should not focus on the study of legal norms, but rather on “cer-  
tain natural phenomena that in the legal system are classified as legal  
facts”. According to Kelsen, the sociology of law does not establish a  
relationship between facts and norms, but between “facts and other  
facts that it considers as their causes or effects,” and therefore “the  
object of this science is not law itself, but certain natural phenomena  
that are parallel to it”14.  
11 Hans Kelsen. Teoría pura del derecho, Buenos Aires, Eudeba, 1987, p. 9.  
12 Ibid., p. 11.  
13 Ibid., p. 95.  
14 Ibid., p. 97.  
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Kelsen then distinguishes legal sociology as a science that “is not  
interested in the norms that constitute the legal order, but in the acts  
by which these norms are created, in their causes and their effects on  
the consciousness of men”, while the pure theory of law postulated by  
him intends to be a science  
specific to law, [which] does not study the facts of consciousness that are  
related to legal norms […] but only these norms taken in themselves, in their  
specific sense […] it does not concern itself with a fact except insofar as it is  
determined by a legal norm15.  
Kelsen’s distinction between legal sociology and the science of law  
thus refers to the differentiation between causal sciences and normati-  
ve sciences. He understands the former to be those that apply the prin-  
ciple of causality to human conduct within the order of nature, such as  
psychology, ethnology, history, and sociology, which he characterizes  
as causal social sciences, sharing this latter characteristic with scien-  
ces like physics, biology, and physiology. On the other hand, law be-  
longs to another type of social science, where the principle of causality  
is not applied, but rather that of imputation, since in these sciences  
human conduct is studied in terms of prescribed behavior, which is ca-  
rried out through norms16. The science of law is therefore, for Kelsen,  
a normative science, insofar as it deals with prescriptions of conduct,  
legal norms that contain prohibitions, permissions, or obligations, and  
that refer to the realm of what ought to be, not what is.  
Thus, the Kelsenian perspective attempts to construct a norma-  
tive science that manages to embody the principles of universality,  
autonomy, and neutrality in the legal field, independent of sociologi-  
cal approaches.  
Returning to Bourdieu, it should be noted that the critiques of  
legal formalism  
are not directed toward a radical denial of legality and legal practice as a mode of  
formal domination (which it is) [nor toward] a commitment to other, less formal  
social mechanisms or channels, such as the discourse of consensus, which would  
be nothing more than cruder forms of the same domination17.  
15 Ibid., pp. 98-99.  
16 Ibid., p. 25.  
17 Andrés García Inda. “Pierre Bourdieu o la ilusión del campo jurídico”, in Juan Antonio  
García Amado (ed.). El derecho en la teoría social. Diálogo con catorce propuestas actua-  
les, Madrid, Dykinson, 2001, p. 430.  
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As Andrés García Inda rightly points out  
What Bourdieu’s anti-formalist analysis offers us is the possibility of better  
understanding how some use (or we use) legality to serve different interests.  
This allows (or allows us) others to participate more coherently in the strug-  
gle that, in the legal field and in various social fields, is waged for the mono-  
poly of the means that contribute to legitimate domination18.  
On the other hand, Bourdieu also seeks to distance himself from po-  
sitions that understand law as a mere instrument of power or a tool  
of domination, understanding law instead as a “direct reflection of  
existing power relations, where economic determinations are expres-  
sed, and in particular the interests of the dominant”19. In this sense,  
Bourdieu distances himself from Marxism, or at least from a certain  
Marxist view of law.  
With the notion of interest, Bourdieu breaks with any mystifying  
and idealized view of human behavior, while with that of strategy, this  
thinker suggests that  
It does not refer to the intentional and planned pursuit of calculated ends, but  
to the active development of objectively oriented lines that obey regularities  
and form coherent and socially intelligible configurations, that is, compre-  
hensible and explainable, taking into account the external social conditions  
and those incorporated by those who produce the practices20.  
It should be clarified that, as Gutiérrez argues, developing a general theory  
of the economics of practices does not imply adopting a reductionist attitude  
toward economics, but rather attempting to define a logic for the functioning  
of social practices through these concepts of capital and interest21. The spe-  
cificity of each field will function as the principle of differentiation; that is,  
within each field we will find specific capital and interests at stake. Capital,  
understood as those goods at stake in each specific field, thus constitutes an  
expression that goes beyond the purely economic. And so does the concept  
18 Ibid., p. 431.  
19 Bourdieu. Poder, derecho y clases sociales, cit., p. 166.  
20 Bourdieu, cited in Alicia B. Gutiérrez. “Con Marx y contra Marx: El materialismo en Pierre  
Bourdieu”, Revista Complutense de Educación, vol. 14, n.° 2, 2003, available in [https://revistas.  
ucm.es/index.php/RCED/article/view/RCED0303220453A/16414], p. 470.  
21 Ibid., p. 471.  
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of interest (or illusio), which transcends the economic and allows us to un-  
derstand the motivations of the agents acting in each specific field, and who,  
therefore, recognize the value of the capital at stake and the rules of the field.  
When analyzing social practices from the concept of field, and un-  
derstanding this as a playing field with its own institutions and laws,  
the notion of strategy acquires particular importance since it defines  
the ways in which different agents carry out the game or the struggle  
among themselves, in order to increase their own capital within the  
field, and thus improve their position.  
Gutiérrez also points out a continuity and, at the same time, a  
rupture between Marx and Bourdieu with respect to theory of the  
classes, fundamentally around two aspects: “how a class is constructed  
in Bourdieu’s perspective and what explanatory weight that notion  
hastoaccountforsocialpractices”22. Withoutdelving intoGutiérrez’s  
analysis, we will highlight here that Bourdieu breaks with Marxist  
economism by defining social classes not only by relations of eco-  
nomic production, although this is an important property for such  
purposes. For this thinker, “social space is a pluridimensional space  
of positions, where every current position can be defined in terms of  
a multidimensional system of coordinates, each of them linked to the  
distribution of a different kind of capital”23. Thus, for Bourdieu, class  
“constitutes a fundamental explanatory principle in the explanation  
and understanding of social phenomena, but after the mediation of  
the field (as a specific structure of positions) and of habitus (as the  
objective conditions associated with classes and incorporated along  
a social trajectory)”24. This, precisely, is where the break lies. of this  
author regarding Marx.  
It is clear that for Marx25, society has a foundation provided by  
the structure of the productive system, with people generating spe-  
cific relations of production that are linked to a particular stage of  
development of the productive forces. Therefore, this material base,  
structured by the relations of production and the productive forces,  
22 Ibid., p. 472.  
23 Ibid., p. 477.  
24 Ibid., p. 480-481.  
25 Karl Marx. Historia crítica de la teoría de la plusvalía, t. i, México D. F., Fondo de Cultura  
Económica, 1945; id. El Capital. Crítica de la economía política, México D. F., Fondo de  
Cultura Económica, 1992.  
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conditions all other social or cultural manifestations, such as law,  
which is nothing more than a superstructure legitimizing the eco-  
nomic structure. Herein lies the ideological function of law, as a su-  
perstructure legitimizing a particular relation of production and,  
consequently, making the mode of production appear neutral, natu-  
ral, and the only valid mode possible. Even in Marx’s critique of the  
notion of human rights developed in On the Jewish Question26, or in a  
certain conception of justice that appears in his Critique of the Gotha  
Programme27, we find the instrumental character of the legal system,  
as a means to achieve another end. Therefore, from this perspective, it  
is difficult to maintain that human rights can be an end in themselves;  
rather, they represent the tool for establishing a “good society”, built  
on a criterion of justice that transcends the bourgeois liberal merito-  
cratic conception.  
In contrast to the Marxist position, Bourdieu complicates the  
study of social practices, providing a set of theoretical tools for their  
analysis by expanding economic concepts such as capital or interest  
and applying them to other fields. This serves as a theoretical arse-  
nal for understanding social practices. By extending these concepts  
to other fields, Bourdieu attempts to explain all practices, even those  
that appear disinterested or gratuitous, as practices oriented toward  
maximizing material or symbolic benefit, even if these benefits are  
not exclusively economic.  
In this framework, law appears for Bourdieu as a legal field, as  
the place of a competition for the monopoly of the right to say the law, that  
is, the good distribution (nomos) or the good order in which agents invested  
with an inseparably social and technical competence confront each other,  
which consists essentially in the socially recognized capacity to interpret (in  
a more or less free or authorized way) a corpus of texts that consecrate the  
legitimate, correct vision of the social world28.  
For Bourdieu, it is possible to maintain a relative autonomy of law wi-  
thout falling into the formalistic naiveté of asserting its absolute auto-  
26 Karl Marx. La cuestión judía y otros escritos, Barcelona, Planeta-Agostini, 1994.  
27 Karl Marx. “Crítica del Programa de Gotha”, in Karl Marx. Teoría Económica, Madrid,  
Altaya, 1999.  
28 Bourdieu. Poder, derecho y clases sociales, cit., p. 169.  
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nomy in relation to external factors such as the economic or political  
spheres. Thus, this thinker seeks to overcome the merely instrumen-  
talist Marxist view of law, departing from the traditional distinction  
between structure of the superstructure, by understanding that di-  
verse social spaces constitute different social fields, each with its own  
specific capital at stake.  
We can therefore argue that Bourdieu’s theoretical approach  
presents a continuity with that of Marx insofar as it strongly criti-  
cizes the formalist notions of Law, where Law appears as a neutral,  
naturalized discourse, coinciding in this in denouncing the ideologi-  
cal function of this legal discourse, legitimizing a certain prevailing  
social order.  
However, Bourdieu’s approach also breaks with Marx insofar as  
it refuses to reduce the legal phenomenon to a superstructure that  
responds to a base of economic structure. Bourdieu rejects Marxist  
economic reductionism, paradoxically extending economic logic to  
fields other than the economic one, constructing a set of analytical  
tools that allow him to explain social practices without reducing them  
to economic causes.  
Finally, Bourdieu aims to construct a notion of Law that tran-  
scends the dichotomy of formalism versus instrumentalism, one that,  
while acknowledging the ideological and legitimizing functions of  
legal discourse, understands the complexity of the legal field in its  
specificity, accounting for its particular phenomena and its relative  
autonomy while linking it to other areas of the social field.  
Bourdieu’s argument seems to align with Weber’s29 analysis of  
the relationship between law and economics, with the latter challeng-  
ing the Marxist conception of law as a superstructure dependent on  
the economic structure. While Weber30 argues that a specific eco-  
nomic orientation does indeed require a particular legal framework  
to sustain itself, law is not solely the guarantor of economic interests;  
rather, diverse interests come into play, relating both to material as-  
pects (property, physical integrity) and to ideal aspects (honor, reli-  
gious beliefs). Nevertheless, it is clear that for Weber, law played a  
29 Max Weber. Sociología del derecho, Granada, Comares, 2001; id. Economía y sociedad,  
México D. F., Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2016.  
30 Weber. Sociología del derecho, cit.  
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fundamental role as an instrument for establishing capitalist rational-  
ity in the West.  
Let’s see an example of this in Weber’s study of the legal pro-  
fessions31 and their influence on the process of rationalizing law. For  
Weber, there is a notable influence on the ways in which the legal  
professions develop when determining legal systems, procedures,  
and legal ideas, and even on social actions and ideas in general.  
In Practical Reasons, when referring to the symbolic dimension of  
state power, Bourdieu32 states that, in order to account for it,  
One can turn to the decisive contribution that Max Weber made, in his wri-  
tings on religion, to the theory of symbolic systems, reintroducing speciali-  
zed agents and their specific interests. Indeed, despite sharing with Marx  
his lesser interest in the structure of symbolic systems (which he also does  
not call by that name, incidentally), which, by its very function, has the merit  
of drawing attention to the producers of these particular products (religious  
agents, in the case that concerns him) and to their interactions (conflict,  
competition, etc.)33.  
It should be clarified that for Bourdieu, the effectiveness of law does  
not lie solely in the use of legal language by its agents, but rather that  
this use must occur within a social context and according to appro-  
priate social norms. Therefore, if we want to understand the power of  
legal discourse, we must link language to the  
social conditions of its production and use, [seeking] beyond the words  
themselves, in the mechanisms that produce both the words and the peo-  
ple who utter and receive them, the principle of power that a certain way of  
using words allows us to mobilize [thus, the use of appropriate language is]  
one of the conditions for the effectiveness of symbolic power and a condition  
that operates only under certain conditions34.  
In other words, the use of language is a necessary but not sufficient  
condition for discursive effectiveness.  
31 Idem.  
32 Bourdieu. Razones prácticas. Sobre la teoría de la acción, cit.  
33 Ibid., p. 121.  
34 Pierre Bourdieu. La nobleza del Estado. Educación de elite y espíritu de cuerpo, Buenos  
Aires, Siglo xxi, 2013, p. 64.  
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Thus, for example, the insult of an individual, as private discourse,  
will not produce the same effect –nor does it have the symbolic pow-  
er– as the verdict of a judge, when putting an end to a conflict by is-  
suing a sentence, publicly proclaiming how things are, through acts  
of nomination or institution that “represents the quintessential form  
of the authorized word, public, official word, which is enunciated in  
the name of all and in the presence of all”, a discourse that goes be-  
yond individual views and that manifests “the sovereign vision of the  
State, holder of the monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence”, thus  
consecrating an established order, which is also “a vision of that order  
which is a vision of the State, guaranteed by the State”35.  
For Bourdieu, “law makes the social world”, but he also recog-  
nizes that law is simultaneously made by that world. Bourdieu thus  
rejects a “radical nominalism” (which he observes in some of Michel  
Foucault’s arguments) and posits a “realistic nominalism”, which un-  
derstands that the categories with which the world is understood are  
both constructed by the social world and the product of “a collective  
historical work” constituted  
from the very structures of that world: structured, historically constructed  
structures. Our categories of thought contribute to producing the world, but  
within the limits of their correspondence with pre-existing structures36.  
It is through this type of realistic nominalism, or “nominalism groun-  
ded in reality”, that it is possible to understand the effect of naming.  
However, when Bourdieu addresses the effectiveness of law, it is  
not enough to understand the symbolic effectiveness of naming; we  
must also consider the specific aspects of legal effectiveness, inher-  
ent to the norm and the law. This is especially true when addressing  
the effects of legal norms, which are stated rules whose non-compli-  
ance is associated with a sanction and which are enforceable (that is,  
whose compliance can be demanded through the use of force).  
Thus, the specific effectiveness of law is found in the “work of codi-  
fication, of shaping and formulating, of neutralization and systemati-  
zation carried out, according to the laws of their own universe, by the  
professionals of symbolic work”, although we must remember that  
35 Bourdieu. Poder, derecho y clases sociales, cit., p. 201.  
36 Ibid., p. 204.  
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This effectiveness, which is defined in opposition to pure and simple  
non-application or to application based on pure coercion, is exercised to  
the extent, and only to the extent, that the law is socially recognized, and  
finds agreement, even tacit and partial, because the law responds, at least in  
appearance, to real needs and interests37.  
Therefore, for Bourdieu, the effectiveness of law lies in the symbolic  
violence that law exerts, which enables legal discourse to fulfill the  
behavioral prescriptions of its norms without the need, in principle,  
for the exercise of physical force.  
To understand what Law is, we must consider the set of objective  
relationships that exist in the legal field, and the relatively autono-  
mous logic that develops within it—a logic of objectification linked to  
the work of formalization, an exercise of symbolic violence that serves  
as the foundation for the effectiveness of Law. Legal work thus gener-  
ates “multiple effects”. Legal agents, through codification, start from  
particular situations (and exemplary decisions) and generate norms  
with a form  
intended to serve as a model for subsequent decisions, and which simulta-  
neously authorizes and favors the logic of precedent, the foundation of the  
properly legal mode of thought and action [therefore] legal work continually  
links the present to the past and guarantees that, except in the case of a revo-  
lution capable of calling into question the very foundations of the legal order,  
the future will be in the image and likeness of the past38.  
Following García Inda39 it is possible to argue that there are certain  
effects inherent to the formalization of the legal code: the effect of  
universalization/generalization, the effect of normalization/natura-  
lization, and the effect of officialization/homologation, which will be  
analyzed below.  
On the one hand, the universalization/generalization effect im-  
plies that, starting from particular conflicts, the task of codification  
allows for the generation of exemplary decisions that can serve to re-  
solve future conflicts. With this systematization and rationalization of  
legal decisions through universalization, the law achieves its symbolic  
37 Ibid., p. 205.  
38 Ibid., p. 208.  
39 García Inda. “Pierre Bourdieu o la ilusión del campo jurídico”, cit.  
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efficacy, transforming the particular worldviews, interests, and values  
of dominant sectors into universal and general worldviews, interests,  
and values, applicable to all individuals, at all times and in all places.  
This effect simultaneously generates two consequences: on the one  
hand, it universalizes practices, that is, it generalizes a particular  
mode of action and expression; and on the other hand, it inscribes a  
logic of conservation in legal work40.  
On the other hand, related to universalization and generalization  
is the naturalization or normalization produced by the forms and for-  
mulas of law. By establishing a systematic and formally coherent set  
of rules of behavior (official and universal), law exerts symbolic domi-  
nation, legitimizing a particular social order. In this way, a normal-  
izing effect occurs, where universalized practices appear as the most  
appropriate for everyone within that social order. The established  
patterns, which reproduce the viewpoint and interests of the domi-  
nant group, appear as the “normal” and “natural” patterns within the  
social order. In Bourdieu’s words, this produces a  
ontological promotion [that] operates by converting regularity (what is re-  
gularly done) into a rule (what is legally required), normality in fact into nor-  
mality in law [...] the legal institution undoubtedly contributes universally  
to imposing a representation of normality in relation to which all different  
practices tend to appear as deviant, anomic, that is, abnormal and patholo-  
gical41.  
For Bourdieu, law is the “instrument of normalization par excellen-  
ce”, and he is surprised by how little reflection has been given to the  
relationship between the normal and the pathological42. At this point,  
we recall Emile Durkheim’s43 arguments, particularly when analyzing  
these concepts of normal and pathological in relation to criminality.  
In the normalization and naturalization effect that Bourdieu ar-  
gues for, the vis formæ, the force of form, is clearly evident: by moving  
from a “statistical regularity” to a “legal rule”, a true change in social  
nature occurs; codification implies a rationality, clarity, explicitness,  
40 Bourdieu. Poder, derecho y clases sociales, cit., p. 212.  
41 Ibid., p. 21.  
42 Ibid., p. 216.  
43 Emile Durkheim. Las reglas del método sociológico, Madrid, Orbis, 1982.  
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and predictability that goes beyond the effects of habitus and social  
sanctions. Furthermore, by universalizing one’s own values, view-  
points, and perspectives on the world, what Bourdieu calls the eth-  
nocentrism of the dominant occurs; dominant values are posited as  
natural and normal.  
Third, we can find an effect of officialization or homologation. In  
The Practical Sense, Bourdieu argues that officialization is  
The process by which the group (or those who dominate it) teaches itself,  
and masks its own truth, binding itself through a public profession that le-  
gitimizes and imposes what it proclaims, tacitly defining the limits of the  
thinkable and the unthinkable and thus contributing to the maintenance of  
the social order from which it derives its power44.  
Applying this to law, we can clearly understand the legitimizing cha-  
racter of the effect of officialization on a legal system. Regarding offi-  
cialization strategies, that is, those through which agents “manifest  
their reverence for the official belief of the group”, Bourdieu states in  
Practical Reasons that these  
are strategies of universalization that grant the group what it demands above  
all else, namely, a public declaration of reverence for the group and for the  
representation it seeks to offer and to offer itself45.  
For Bourdieu  
The universal recognition given to the official rule means that respect, even  
formal or fictitious, for the rule guarantees benefits of regularity (it is always  
easier and more convenient to be in compliance) or of “regularization” (as  
bureaucratic realism sometimes says, for example, “regularizing a situa-  
tion”)”46.  
Therefore,  
Universalization […] is the universal strategy of legitimation. Whoever con-  
forms to the rules puts the group on their side by ostensibly siding with the  
44 Bourdieu. El sentido práctico, cit., pp. 172-173.  
45 Bourdieu. Razones prácticas. Sobre la teoría de la acción, cit., p. 222.  
46 Ibid., p. 223.  
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group in and through a public act of recognizing a common norm, universal  
insofar as it is universally approved within the group’s boundaries.  
He proclaims that he accepts to assume in his behavior the point of view of  
the group, valid for every possible agent, for a universal X47.  
Alongside the officialization effect appears the homologation effect of  
law. Bourdieu reminds us that “homolegein means saying the same  
thing, or speaking the same language”48; applied to objectification in  
the form of an explicit code, this code enables different actors to make  
explicit the principles of consensus and dissent. For this author, ho-  
mologation allows for a form of rationality that enables predictability  
and calculability; thus, the agents involved in a codified action, having  
an explicit and coherent norm, can calculate the consequences of obe-  
dience or disobedience to it.  
However, Bourdieu recognizes that only those who are at the  
same level of the regulated universe of legal formalism can enjoy the  
effects of homologation: the professionals who hold a specific compe-  
tence, leaving the laypeople only as those who can suffer the violence  
of the form;  
condemned to suffer the force of the form, that is, the symbolic violence that  
those who, thanks to their art of putting into form and putting into forms,  
know, as is often said, how to put the law on their side, come to exercise49.  
Finally, it could be argued that another effect of law is the reproduc-  
tion and maintenance of the social order. For Bourdieu, law not only  
implies reproduction within the legal field itself, but is also a funda-  
mental tool of symbolic domination, of maintaining the symbolic or-  
der and, therefore, the social order. Thus, the legal field also plays a  
fundamental role in social reproduction; it serves as an instrument  
for legitimizing and reproducing social domination.  
In The Practical Sense, Bourdieu states that  
law does nothing other than symbolically consecrate, through a register  
that eternalizes and universalizes, the state of the power relations between  
47 Ibid., p. 223.  
48 Bourdieu. Poder, derecho y clases sociales, cit., p. 218.  
49 Ibid., p. 219.  
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groups and classes produced and practically guaranteed by the functioning  
of these mechanisms50.  
By virtue of the dominant role, it plays in social reproduction, the legal  
field—according to Bourdieu—has less autonomy than other fields  
such as the artistic, literary, or scientific. Therefore, external changes  
“are more directly reflected in it”, while “internal conflicts are more  
directly resolved by external forces”. Thus, for example, the privileged  
position granted to civil law within the hierarchy of the legal division  
of labor, in relation to other branches such as labor law, depends on  
“the place occupied in the political field by the groups whose interests  
are directly related to the corresponding forms of law”51.  
It should be remembered that for Bourdieu it is not possible to  
consider that the legal field lacks relative autonomy (Bourdieu would  
not accept speaking of absolute autonomy in any case), nor that the  
legal space is completely determined by the economic or the political,  
although from such a position it can be recognized that the influence  
of economic and political factors is greater in law than in other areas  
such as science or art.  
It is also significant that both the reproduction of the legal field  
and the function of maintaining the symbolic and social order that  
this field helps to ensure are part of the field’s “structure of play”, even  
beyond the intentions of the agents. Bourdieu52 thus concludes that,  
even in revolutionary processes, the function of maintaining and re-  
producing the symbolic order by the legal field is such that the “sub-  
versive attempts of the vanguards” end up constituting an “adaptation  
of law and the legal field to the new state of social relations”, which  
ensures and legitimizes the new balance of power established53.  
III. Conclusions  
Bourdieu’s interest lies not specifically in studying law, but rather in  
social practices in their various manifestations, recognizing the im-  
50 Pierre Bourdieu. El sentido práctico, Buenos Aires, Siglo xxi, 2007, p. 214.  
51 Bourdieu. Poder, derecho y clases sociales, cit., p. 219.  
52 Bourdieu. Poder, derecho y clases sociales, cit.  
53 Ibid., p. 223.  
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portant role that law plays in them. However, when addressing the  
legal field, his analysis aims to offer a perspective on law that trans-  
cends the dichotomy between internalist or formalist views, on the  
one hand, and externalist or instrumentalist positions on the other.  
Bourdieu’s development involves a strong critique of internal-  
ist or formalist positions, those that uphold the absolute autonomy  
of the legal field—pure theories rooted in a discourse founded on  
the supposed neutrality and objectivity of law and legal practice. For  
Bourdieu, this stance only intensifies the ideological role of law as a  
tool for social reproduction and symbolic domination, disregarding  
the concrete practices upon which it is based.  
In this critique, as in other aspects, Bourdieu adheres to Marx,  
and it can be argued that Bourdieu’s position is materialist to some  
extent, since he grounds social practices, in particular, in the material  
conditions of their production and in the power relations between the  
various agents interacting within the field. However, Bourdieu does  
not reduce these material conditions to merely economic aspects,  
while also recognizing the existence of ideal or symbolic aspects in  
the constitution of the social.  
Bourdieu also distances himself from Marx and Marxism in his  
understanding of law insofar as he tries to avoid economic reduction-  
ism, while also trying not to fall into mere externalism or instrumen-  
talism that understands law only as a tool or instrument of domina-  
tion.  
Bourdieu’s approach to law allows us, on the one hand, to break  
with the naive (or obfuscating) view of legal formalism, a hegemonic  
position in the discourse of legal agents themselves, including those  
working in judicial and academic spheres. But at the same time, this  
approach does not fall into an anti-legal position; rather, it allows for  
a return to problematizing law when it comes to understanding rela-  
tions of power and domination. Bourdieu’s position does not imply  
viewing law solely in terms of power or domination (which would  
be mere externalism or instrumentalism), but, conversely, analyzing  
power in terms of law, in its relationship to the legal field, and how it  
is influenced by and, in turn, influences other fields such as the politi-  
cal or economic.  
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At the same time, this perspective seems to provide a framework  
that allows progress in two directions. From a theoretical standpoint,  
it offers a starting point for advancing a theorization of law that is not  
merely formalistic and recognizes the relationship between law and  
other dimensions such as the economic and the political, but which  
also does not reduce law to a mere superstructure, acknowledging the  
relative autonomy of legal constructions and practices. From a prac-  
tical and academic standpoint, Bourdieu’s theory is of fundamental  
importance in the training of future legal professionals; by avoiding  
both an anti-legal position and economic reductionism, Bourdieu’s  
perspective allows for a reevaluation of the role of law and legal prac-  
tices as a space for reflection on law as a socio-legal phenomenon, and  
on the practices themselves within the field.  
Finally, perhaps Bourdieu’s most important contribution to law  
is that, through his analysis, he breaks with the hegemonic legal dis-  
course and, therefore, with a certain legal common sense. His approach  
questions legal practices and theories, inviting us to explore a path  
of understanding and analyzing law based on our own practices, and  
providing us with one of the most interesting tools and perspectives  
for the social analysis of law in recent times.  
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