  The idea that law is ideological is an important contribution to legal scholarship. First, it enables a more critical view of the law and its role, and thereby demystifies a set of vital social institutions. Second, it points to the importance of sociological and political factors in our understanding of the law. Legality is shaped and influenced by non-legal aspects of society, and law, in turn, has an impact on society and social change, not just in the obvious effects of particular judgments, but in the political culture that a legal system helps produce.