This interdisciplinary study traces the historically specific ways of functioning of the legal regulator (Bulgarian criminal law) in three social contexts: the Bulgarian society in the period after the end of Ottoman rule, the early socialist period and postsocialist society. It requires an analysis of law from a double point of view: law as encompassing the qualitative peculiarities of the socio-historical context and law as a necessary component of that context's systemic-structural reproduction.

The goals of the study are:

• To outline the structure and logic of the field of social relations which are the object of normative impact by criminal law in the three socio-historical contexts, define the degree and zones of social inefficiency of the penal legal regulation, and identify probable extralegal, and therefore socio-structural (historical and current), causes acting counter to the efficient penal legal regulation;
• To estimate the relative social weight of these relations within the context of the overall social life along the limits of the actual applicability of penal regulations and determine the sociological indicators of the historical changeability of penal legal regulation in the Bulgarian society not only in structure, form and contents but also by relative social weight;
• To describe the historical dynamics and changeability of penal regulations in Bulgarian society and establish the type of new social relations and/or ‘outdated' relations integrated in or excluded from the texture of criminal law; to fix the limits of tensions of criminal law with the other normative systems and uncover possible forms of ‘normative dualism' in the same circle of relations;
• To analyse the power intensity of penal legal regulation in the transition to a new socio-historical context, i.e., establish the proportion between the elements of reflection, values and prescription; define the transformation in the generalised method of impact (dynamics between the dispositive and the imperative methods); the basic strategy and tactical instruments of regulation; the structures of governance and level of political intervention; and the degree and forms of rationality of Bulgarian legal system; and last but not least,
• ‘To measure' the level of authority of and trust in criminal law in Bulgarian.