Law, Order, and Power - Second Edition

• NCJ Number: 84636
• Author(s): W Chambliss; R Seidman
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 235 pages
• Sale Source: Addison-Wesley Publishing
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

A methodology for studying law and society is developed, followed by a review of theoretical perspectives of law and society and the presentation of a general model for explaining the interaction of law and society, which is then applied to specific areas of the legal system's operation.

Abstract

The model used to explain the interaction of law and society depicts an authoritarian legal order where lawmakers promulgate law, enforcers implement it, and the rest respond to it. It assumes that the governors remain distinct from the masses and that the authoritarian structure lies at the heart of the felt deficiencies of the legal order. A discussion of the laws of contract and property concludes that these laws reflect the power of merchant, capitalist, and corporate elites in various epochs in the face of opposition from other social classes and groups struggling against them. The language of law is viewed as arising because the structure of the legal order and the ideology that dominated most of its professional actors created lawyers as a specialized profession that created a specialized dialect that bolsters the power of lawyers. A model for explaining the larger social forces behind lawmaking emphasizes the importance of basic contradictions in the political economy as the starting point for a sociological understanding of lawmaking. Appellate courts are seen as rendering decisions that essentially maintain the status quo. The effect of bureaucratic organizations and the state on the implementation and creation of law is also examined, and it is argued that the bureaucracy mediates and affects the legal order but does not control it. In the concluding chapter on the state and the legal order under capitalism, it is explained that those at the top act as a class to perpetuate their privilege while those below do likewise. The contrary interests generate conflicts in response to which the state promulgates and enforces laws. The relationship between state, legal order, and government becomes complex, interactive, and everchanging. The process is viewed as dialectical. Notes accompany each chapter, and name and subject indexes are provided.