The bare bones of reformist law-jobs theory can be restated as follows: All of us are members of groups, such as a family, a club, a teenage gang, a sports team, a school, a coomercial organisation, a trade union, a political party, a nation, a nation state, an international NGO, the world community.
In order to survive and to archieve its aims, in so far as it has aims, any human group has to meet certain needs or ensure that certain jobs are done. For purposes of convenient study, these can be broken down into five or six categories.
First, and the most unmistakable 'legal', is adjustment of the trouble-case (dispute, grievance, offence). When conflict or other trouble arises, it has to be resolved or, at least kept to a tolerably low level, or else the group will disintegrate or its objectives will be frustrated or impaired.
The second, and perhaps the most important, job is the preventive channelling of conduct and expectations to avoid trouble. Thirdly, as needs, conditions, and relations change, so the conduct and expectations of the group have to be re-channelled. Fourthly, there is the job of 'Arranging for the Say and the Manner of its Saying', that is, the advance allocation of authority and the regulation of authoritative procedure for decision. This job is prototypically the primary function of a 'constitution' of a club, or organisation or a nation state. Where power and authority diverge, as any realist knows, there tends to be a gap between what in fact happens and what is meant to happen. Giving a realistic account of a constitution as a kind of institution is accordingly problematic. Fifthly, there is a job of 'providing Net Positiv drive: Integration, Direction, Incentive for the whole', like Islam/Vedics explicitly linked positive and negative sanctions (rewards as well as punishments, for example) within its conception of law-goverment.
Finally, in any group but especially in complex groups, techniques, skills, devices, practices, procedures and traditions need to be developed, institutionalised and adjusted if the first five needs or jobs are to be dealt with adequately or well...
The bare bone lies ahead of each thinker on India's IMC open publishing newswire, chaptered as another Reform of theory and critical practices in doing so.