Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:38:41.006Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Concept of Laws in Social Science: A Critique and Notes on an Expanded View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2024

Malcolm M. Feeley*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

During the past decade there has been a resurgence of interest in the problem of law and social control. Indicative of this interest, a rekindling of an earlier tradition, is the founding of the Law and Society Association and its journal the Law & Society Review, the growth of course offerings both in law schools and social science departments, and the emergence of a rapidly growing body of literature. Research interests in this area, often captured by such terms as impact, compliance, legal effectiveness, and law and social change, have diverged from the traditional preoccupation with the development and meaning of formal legal doctrine and from the more recent behavioral concerns with judicial decisionmaking, to address the broader questions of the effects of law on society at large. While varying in breadth, depth, and precise focus, most of this research treats law as an independent variable and its consequences as the dependent variables, the events caused by the law. In the language of systems theory, the formal legal rules are the “policy outputs” while changes—of whatever scope—are the “policy outcomes.” Although these studies vary from one-shot case histories to projects involving multiple controls and multiple time series analyses, they all tend to conform to this general design.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1974 annual meetings of the American Political Science Association.

References

ABEL, Richard (1973) “Law Books and Books About Law,” 26 Stanford Law Review 175.Google Scholar
ABEL, Richard (1974) “A Comparative Theory of Dispute Institutions in Society,” 8 Law & Society Review 217.Google Scholar
AKERS, Ronald and Richard, HAWKINS (1975) Law and Control in Society. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
ANDENAES, Johannes (1966) “General Preventive Effects of Punishment,” 114 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 949.Google Scholar
AUERBACH, Carl A. (1966) “Legal Tasks for the Sociologist,” 1 Law & Society Review 91.Google Scholar
AUSTIN, John (1832) [1955 Reprint] The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. London: Weidfield and Nicholson.Google Scholar
BAER, William C. (1975) “On the Making of Perfect and Beautiful Social Programs,” 39 The Public Interest 80.Google Scholar
BARKUN, Michael (1966) Law Without Sanctions. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
BECKER, Theodore and Malcolm, FEELEY (1972) (eds.) The Impact of Supreme Court Decisions (2d Edition). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
BITTKER, Borris L, Charles O., GALVIN, R.A., MUSGRAVE and Joseph A., PECHMAN (1968) A Comprehensive Income Tax Base? A Debate. Branford: Federal Tax Press [Reprinted in part from 80 and 81 Harvard Law Review (1967-1968)].Google Scholar
BLACK, Donald (1972a) “The Boundaries of Legal Sociology,” 81 Yale Law Journal 1086.Google Scholar
BLACK, Donald (1972b) “The Mobilization of Law,” 2 Journal of Legal Studies 125.Google Scholar
BLACK, Donald and Maureen, MILESKI (1973) (eds.) The Social Organization of Law. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
BLUMBERG, Abraham (1970) Criminal Justice. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.Google Scholar
BUCHANAN, James (1974) “Good Economics Bad Law,” 60 Virginia Law Review 451.Google Scholar
CALABRESI, Guido (1970) The Costs of Accidents. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
CRAIN, Robert with the assistance of Morton INGER, Gerald A., MCWORTER and James J., VANECKO (1969) The Politics of School Desegregation. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
DAHL, Robert and Charles E., LINDBLOM (1954) Politics, Economics, and Welfare. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
DERSHOWITZ, Alan (1973) “Preventive Confinement: A Suggested Framework for Constitutional Analysis,” 51 Texas Law Review 1277.Google Scholar
EDELMAN, Murray (1964) The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
EHRLICH, Isaac (1972) “The Deterrent Effect of Criminal Law Enforcement,” 1 Journal of Legal Studies 259.Google Scholar
ETZIONI, Amitai (1960) “Two Approaches to Organizational Analysis: A Critique and A Suggestion,” 5 Administrative Science Quarterly 257.Google Scholar
FEELEY, Malcolm (1970) “Coercion and Compliance,” 4 Law & Society Review 407.Google Scholar
FEELEY, Malcolm (1972) “Power, Impact, and the Supreme Court,” in Becker, T. and Feeley, M. (eds.) The Impact of Supreme Court Decisions (2d Edition). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
FEELEY, Malcolm (1973) “Two Models of the Criminal Justice System: An Organizational Perspective,” 7 Law & Society Review 407.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence and Stewart, MACAULAY (1969) (eds.) Law and the Behavioral Sciences. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
FULLER, Lon (1940) The Law in Quest of Itself. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
GERSTEIN, Robert (1970) “The Practice of Fidelity to Law,” 4 Law & Society Review 259.Google Scholar
GIBBS, Jack (1968) “Definitions of Law and Empirical Questions,” 2 Law & Society Review 429.Google Scholar
GIBBS, Jack (1975) Crime, Punishment, and Deterrence. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
GROSSMAN, Joel and Mary, GROSSMAN (1971) (eds.) Law and Change in Modern America. Pacific Palisades: Goodyear Publishing Company.Google Scholar
GUSFIELD, Joseph R. (1963) Symbolic Crusade. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
HART, H.L.A. (1961) The Concept of Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
HOEBEL, E.A. (1954) The Law of Primitive Man. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
KELSEN, Hans (1961) General Theory of Law and State. New York: Russell and Russell.Google Scholar
KRISLOV, Samuel, Keith O., BOYUM, Jerry N., CLARK, Roger C., SHAFFER, and Susan O., WHITE (1972) Compliance and the Law. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications [Originally published as 4(4) and 5(1) Law & Society Review (1970)].Google Scholar
LASSWELL, Harold (1950) Politics: Who Gets What, When, How. New York: P. Smith.Google Scholar
LEFF, Arthur (1974) “Economic Analysis of Law: Some Realism about Nominalism,” 60 Virginia Law Review 451.Google Scholar
MITCHELL, John (1969) “Bail Reform and The Constitutionality of Pretrial Detention,” 55 Virginia Law Review 1223.Google Scholar
MOHR, Lawrence (1973) “The Concept of Organizational Goal,” 67 American Political Science Review 470.Google Scholar
PASHUKANIS, E.B. (1951) “The General Theory of Law and Marxism,” in H. Babb (trans.) Soviet Legal Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
POSNER, Richard (1974) Economic Analysis of Law. Boston: Little Brown and Company.Google Scholar
ROGERS, Harrell (1971) “Law as an Instrument of Public Policy,” 14 American Journal of Political Science 638.Google Scholar
ROSE, Arnold (1954) “Voluntary Associations in France,” in Rose, Arnold (ed.) Theory and Method in the Social Sciences. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 72.Google Scholar
SCHWARTZ, Richard and Sonya, ORLEANS (1967) “On Legal Sanctions,” 34 University of Chicago Law Review 275.Google Scholar
SCHWARTZ, Richard and Jerome, SKOLNICK (1970) (eds.) Society and the Legal Order. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
SELZNICK, Philip (1961) “Sociology and Natural Law,” 6 Natural Law Forum 84.Google Scholar
SELZNICK, Philip (1969) Law, Society, and Industrial Justice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
SHAPIRO, Martin (1970) “Decentralized Decision-Making in the Law of Torts,” in Ulmer, S.S. (ed.) Political Decision-Making. New York: Van Nostrand.Google Scholar
SHAPIRO, Martin (1972) “From Public Law to Public Policy or the Public in 'Public Law,” 5 PS 410.Google Scholar
SIMON, Rita James (1968) The Sociology of Law. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company.Google Scholar
SKOLNICK, Jerome (1966a) Justice Without Trial. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
SKOLNICK, Jerome (1966b) “Social Research on Legality: A Reply to Aeurbach,” 1 Law & Society Review 105.Google Scholar
SUCHMAN, Edward A. (1967) Evaluative Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
SUDNOW, David (1965) “Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal Code in a Public Defender's Office,” 12 Social Problems 272.Google Scholar
SURREY, Stanley S. (1973) Pathways to Tax Reform. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TITTLE, Charles, and Charles, LOGAN (1973) “Sanctions and Deviance: Evidence and Remaining Questions,” 7 Law & Society Review 371.Google Scholar
WASBY, Stephen (1970) The Impact of the United States Supreme Court. Chicago: Dorsey.Google Scholar
YALE LAW JOURNAL (1967) “Project: Interrogations in New Haven: The Impact of Miranda,” 76 Yale Law Journal 1519.Google Scholar
ZIMRING, Franklin and Gordon, HAWKINS (1973) Deterrence: The Legal Threat in Crime Control. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar