Law is not only about legal norms, about the normative legal order. It is also about first-order sociolegal practices where legal norms are realised and specialised legal practices where norms are (re)produced and their realisation is guaranteed. Characteristic of modern state law is differentiation. An important aspect of differentiation is abstraction of legal norms from sociolegal practices. In turn, differentiation of norms and practices has enabled the emergence of specialised legal practices, including legal scholarship, with their focus on law as a normative legal order. Yet differentiation does not mean isolation. The normativity of law cannot be accounted for without heeding law’s sociality, nor can sociality be accounted for without heeding normativity. A relational approach is needed: normativity must be related to sociality and vice versa.