Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T16:18:52.808Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Legal Cultures and Punishment Repertoires in Japan, Russia, and the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Joseph Sanders  and
V. Lee Hamilton
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Several years ago we conducted surveys in one American (Detroit) and two Japanese (Yokohama and Kanazawa) cities exploring the nature of responsibility and sanctioning judgments. Recently we were able to replicate a portion of those surveys in Moscow, and here we compare the results of the Moscow survey with the earlier findings. The fundamental question is whether socialist societies, at least as they have existed in the republics of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, have created a contextual legal culture like that of Japan, or whether their legal culture is more like the individualistic model of the United States. Our data indicate that when presented with situations of wrongdoing, Moscow residents' punishment preferences more nearly resemble the individualistic preferences of Detroit residents than they do the contextual preferences of Japanese residents. However, unlike Japanese and U.S. residents, the Moscow residents also expressed a preference for quasi-criminal educative sanctions.

Type
Legal Culture and Legal Discourse
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , 1992 , pp. 117 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

This article is based on a paper presented at the Law and Society Association Meetings, Amsterdam, 29 June 1991. We wish to thank Gennady Denisovsky, Polina Kozyreva, and others from the Institute of Sociology for ably directing the Moscow survey. We also wish to thank Misha Matskovsky and James Gibson for their assistance on the Moscow survey. Michael Speckhart, a graduate student at the University of Houston, provided invaluable help with translations throughout the research. Support for the Moscow survey was provided by the National Science Foundation Grant No. SES 90-03868 and the Law School and College of Social Sciences at the University of Houston.

References

Auerbach, Jerold (1983) Justice without Law? New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Bayley, David (1991) Forces of Order: Policing Modern Japan. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Beirne, Piers, & Hunt, Alan (1988) “Law and the Constitution of Soviet Society: The Case of Comrade Lenin,” 22 Law & Society Rev. 575.Google Scholar
Berman, Harold (1963) Justice in the U.S.S.R.: An Interpretation of Soviet Law. New York: Vintage Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Harold, & Spindler, James (1963) “Soviet Comrades' Courts,” 38 Washington Law Rev. 843.Google Scholar
Black, Donald (1976) The Behavior of Law. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, John (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchanan, Allen (1982) Marx and Justice: The Radical Critique of Liberalism. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Burawoy, Michael, & Krotov, Pavel (1992) “The Soviet Transition from Socialism to Capitalism: Worker Control and Economic Bargaining in the Wood Industry,” 57 American Sociological Rev. 16.Google Scholar
Cole, Robert E. (1979) Work, Mobility, and Participation: A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Industry. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Damaska, Mirjan (1986) The Faces of Justice and State Authority: A Comparative Approach to the Legal Process. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Doi, Takeo (1986) The Anatomy of Self. New York: Kodansha.Google Scholar
Ekland-Olson, Sheldon (1984) “Social Control and Relational Disturbance: A Microstructural Paradigm,” in Black, D., ed., 2 Toward a General Theory of Social Control. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Fallers, Lloyd (1969) Law without Precedent: Legal Ideas in Action in the Courts of Colonial Bugosa. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Feifer, George (1964) Justice in Moscow. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Fiss, Owen (1984) “Against Settlement,” 93 Yale Law J. 1073.Google Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence (1985) Total Justice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Gibson, James, & Duch, Ray (1991) “Anti-Semitic Attitudes of the Mass Public: Estimates and Explanations Based on a Survey of the Moscow Oblast,” 56 Public Opinion Quarterly 1.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max (1967) The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Gorlé, Frits (1982) “Latest Developments in the Area of Comradely Justice,” in Feldbrugge, F.J. M. & Simons, William, eds., Perspectives on Soviet Law in the 1980s. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Griffiths, John (1970) “Ideology in Criminal Procedure, Or a Third ‘Model’ of the Criminal Process,” 79 Yale Law J. 359.Google Scholar
Haley, John (1978) “The Myth of the Reluctant Litigant,” 4 J. of Japanese Studies 359.Google Scholar
Haley, John (1982) “The Politics of Informal Justice: The Japanese Experience, 1922–1942,” in Abel, R., ed., 2 The Politics of Informal Justice. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Haley, John (1986) “Comment” The Implications of Apology,“ 20 Law & Society Rev. 499.Google Scholar
Hamaguchi, Esyun (1985) “A Contextual Model of the Japanese: Toward a Methodological Innovation in Japanese Studies,” 11 J. of Japanese Studies 289.Google Scholar
Hamilton, V. Lee, & Sanders, Joseph (1981) “The Effect of Roles and Deeds on Responsibility Judgments: The Normative Structure of Wrongdoing,” 44 Social Psychology Q. 237.Google Scholar
Hamilton, V. Lee, & Sanders, Joseph (1983) “Universals in Judging Wrongdoing: Japanese and Americans Compared,” 48 American Sociological Rev. 199.Google Scholar
Hamilton, V. Lee, & Sanders, Joseph (1988) “Punishment and the Individual in the United States and Japan,” 22 Law & Society Rev. 301.Google Scholar
Hamilton, V. Lee, & Sanders, Joseph (1992) Everyday Justice: Responsibility and the Individual in Japan and the United States. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Hecht, Leo, ed. (1983) The Soviet Union through Its Laws. New York: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Holmes, Leslie, ed. (1981) Withering Away of the State? Party and State under Communism. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Hsu, Francis (1975) Iemoto: The Heart of Japan. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Halsted Press Division.Google Scholar
Johnson, Frank (1985) “The Western Concept of Self,” in Marsella, A. J., DeVos, G., & Hsu, F. L. K., eds., Culture and Self: Asian and Western Perspectives. New York: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Kawashima, Takeyoshi (1963) “Dispute Resolution in Contemporary Japan,” in Mehren, A. von, ed., Law in Japan: The Legal Order in a Changing Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Kawashima, Takeyoshi (1968) “The Status of the Individual in the Notion of Law, Right and Social Order in Japan,” in Moore, C. A., ed., The Status of the Individual in East and West. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Kidder, Robert (1983) Connecting Law and Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
György, Konrád, & Szelényi, Ivan (1979) The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Krygier, Martin (1990) “Marxism and the Rule of Law: Reflections After the Collapse of Communism,” 15 Law & Social Inquiry 633.Google Scholar
Kuss, Klaus-Jurgen (1986) “New Institutions in Socialist Constitutional Law: The Polish Constitutional Tribunal and the Hungarian Constitutional Council,” 12 Rev. of Socialist Law 343.Google Scholar
Lempert, Richard, & Sanders, Joseph (1986) An Invitation to Law and Social Science. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd-Bostock, Sally (1983) “Attribution of Cause and Responsibility as Social Phenomena,” in Jaspars, J., Fincham, F. D., & Hewstone, M., eds., Attribution Theory and Research: Conceptual, Developmental and Social Dimensions. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart (1963) “Non-contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study,” 28 American Sociological Rev. 55.Google Scholar
Markovits, Inga (1982) “Law or Order—Constitutionalism and Legality in Eastern Europe,” 34 Stanford Law Rev. 513.Google Scholar
Markovits, Inga (1986) “Pursuing One's Rights under Socialism,” 38 Stanford Law Rev. 689.Google Scholar
Markovits, Inga (1989) “Law and Glasnost': Some Thoughts about the Future of Judicial Review under Socialism,” 23 Law & Society Rev. 399.Google Scholar
Mather, Lynn, & Yngvesson, Barbara (1980–81) “Language, Audience, and the Transformation of Disputes,” 15 Law & Society Rev. 775.Google Scholar
Miyazawa, Setsuo (1987) “Taking Kawashima Seriously: A Review of Japanese Research on Japanese Legal Consciousness and Disputing Behavior,” 21 Law & Society Rev. 219.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura (1969) “Styles of Court Procedure: To Make the Balance,” in Nader, L., ed., Law in Culture and Society. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Packer, Herbert (1968) The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quigley, John (1988) “The New Soviet Law on Appeals: Glasnost' in the Soviet Courts,” 37 International & Comparative Law Q. 172.Google Scholar
Ramseyer, J. Mark (1985) “The Costs of the Consensual Myth: Antitrust Enforcement and Institutional Barriers to Litigation in Japan,” 94 Yale Law J. 604.Google Scholar
Ramseyer, J. Mark (1988) “Reluctant Litigant Revisited: Rationality and Disputes in Japan,” 14 J. of Japanese Studies 111.Google Scholar
Salas, Luis (1983) “The Emergence and Decline of the Cuban Popular Tribunals,” 17 Law & Society Rev. 587.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Sanders, Joseph, & Hamilton, V. Lee (1987) “Is There a ‘Common Law’ of Responsibility?” 11 Law & Human Behavior 277.Google Scholar
Sharlet, Robert (1978) “Pashukanis and the Withering Away of Law in the USSR,” in Fitzpatrick, S., ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Skapska, Grazyna (1990) “The Rule of Law from the East Central European Perspective,” 15 Law & Social Inquiry 699.Google Scholar
Smith, R. J. (1983) Japanese Society: Tradition, Self, and the Social Order. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Sypnowich, Christine (1990) The Concept of Socialist Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanase, Takao (1990) “The Management of Disputes: Automobile Accident Compensation in Japan,” 24 Law & Society Rev. 651.Google Scholar
Upham, Frank (1987) Law and Social Change in Post War Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Wagatsuma, Hiroshi, & Rosett, Arthur (1986) “The Implications of Apology: Law and Culture in Japan and the United States,” 20 Law & Society Rev. 461.Google Scholar
Weis, John R., Rothbaum, Fred, & Blackburn, Thomas (1984) “Standing Out and Standing In: The Psychology of Control in America and Japan,” 39 American Psychologist 955.Google Scholar