NCJ Number
84501
Date Published
1981
Length
24 pages
Annotation
The roles of law and legal systems in justice studies are considered.
Abstract
Law defines those injustices that, in the current stage of society's consciousness, are considered serious enough to warrant official intervention. Legal systems provide the governmental mechanism for that societal reaction. To facilitate understanding of the several ways in which law and legal systems serve as bases of justice systems, the opening section discusses four contributions that these concepts make to the study of justice and justice systems: (1) the role of law in establishing the framework for justice systems, (2) the role played by law in establishing the substantive rules that justice systems enforce, (3) law as a source of procedural rules that order justice system processes, and (4) law as providing the processes by which justice system operations are evaluated and changed. The second section briefly considers the principal elements of the law of criminal procedure, focusing on problems encountered in the acquisition of evidence, the law of arrest, and pretrial procedure, accusation, trial, sentencing, and postconviction remedies. The discussion illustrates that law provides the procedural rules governing justice system processes. Implications of the discussion for justice studies include the establishment of joint schools of justice and school of law degree programs and courses bearing upon the dynamics of change in the institutions of law and legal systems. Fifty references are listed.