Origin of Order and the Dynamics of Justice (From New Directions in the Study of Justice, Law, and Social Control, P 189-206, 1990, Melvin J Lerner, ed. -- See NCJ-121983)

• NCJ Number: 121991
• Author(s): L Nader
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Plenum Press
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Critical Issues in Social Justice Series

Annotation

This discussion of relationships between such concepts as law and order and law and justice assumes that order is not solely or even commonly achieved by law enforcement policies and that social order and justice are not coupled.

Abstract

Those who view the social system as just argue that the law must maintain order to preserve the existing social structure. On the other hand, those who believe that social inequities sustain an unjust social system call for government programs to remedy injustice. The context of order hides certain parametric decision rules for defining, recognizing, and suppressing disorder. Order is not descriptive; rather, it is a piece of political phenomenology. It is contended that the debate over issues of law, order, disorder, justice, and injustice lacks an adequate test of the assumptions about relationships between social structure and social law and order and that a better understanding of the link between social structure and social order is needed. The power embedded in the control of the definition of deviance in an analysis of consumer complaints is also reviewed; where defective and dangerous products are sold, it is the complaining consumer who is perceived to be the deviant rather than the producer of faulty and hazardous machinery. When people call for justice, they are driven by a sense of injustice that leads them to want to transform the social structure. Cross-cultural data are used to illustrate the extent to which alternative dispute resolution mechanisms are activated to counteract injustice. 28 references.