This paper is based on an exploratory study of the Office of Prosecuting Attorney, King County (Seattle), Washington. The lack of social scientific knowledge about the prosecutor dictated the choice of this approach. An open-ended interview was administered to one-third of the former deputy prosecutors who had worked in the office during the ten year period 1955-1965. In addition, interviews were conducted with court employees, members of the bench, law enforcement officials, and others having reputations for participation in legal decision-making. Over fifty respondents were contacted during this phase. A final portion of the research placed the author in the role of observer in the prosecutor's office. This experience allowed for direct observation of all phases of the decision to prosecute so that the informal processes of the office could be noted. Discussions with the prosecutor's staff, judges, defendant's attorneys, and the police were held so that the interview data could be placed within an organizational context.

This paper is an attempt to review the body of social science writings of the last four and one-half decades on the petit jury. The major portion of this presentation will be limited to organizing the findings on the jury around the two major themes—competence and representation—which are most often discussed in empirical literature. A concluding section will offer some evaluative comments and present some tentative proposals for a new perspective on the sociological study of the jury.

A question of interest to political and legal scholars is: Does experience in a judicial role produce political perceptions and attitudes which systematically differ from those produced by the lawyer-advocate (nonjudicial) role? To date, the efforts of the judicial behaviorists have centered on an elicitation of attitudes from either judges or advocates, but few studies have been structured to examine both roles in respect to a common stimuli set. A rare opportunity to make such a comparative survey presented itself to the investigators in conjunction with their participation in a more extensive study of state constitutional conventions. In conjunction with a study of the New York Constitutional Convention of 1966-67, interviews were conducted with 175 of the 186 delegates to that convention. Of these 175 delegates, 22 were judges and 101 were lawyers. This situation was unique, for it allowed a direct comparison

The belief that serious or acute mental problems are only prevalent in urbanized and technologically advanced societies and absent in preindustrial, largely rural, African societies is an exaggeration (Milner, 1966). Mental disorder, however, is not a major concern of East African legal systems. The social fabric in East African societies is still closely knit and thus provides ways to treat or take care of the deviants. Large-scale industrial development, which enhances the likelihood of behavioral aberrations in the industrialized societies of Europe and America, has not yet taken place, and thus the peasants of East Africa have been spared its ill effects.

That the American culture contains criminogenic elements leading to blue-collar crime, white-collar crime and noncriminal exploitation has been recognized by sociologists. Sutherland (1949: 9) defined a white-collar crime as one “committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his legitimate occupation.” White-collar crime included such acts as false and deceptive advertising, mislabeling of goods, price fixing, selling adulterated goods, violating weights and measures statutes, performing illegal operations (by doctors), fee-splitting (by lawyers), and others. Thus crime could no longer be defined solely as the illegal activity of blue-collar, low-class and pathological persons, but extended to all classes, with the prestige group at the top setting a pattern of lawlessness reflected and emulated by subgroups.

The federal government has expanded so much in recent years, both in the number of its personnel, and in the number of functions it performs, that to refer to the executive branch as if it were a homogeneous group of departments and agencies is highly misleading. On the other hand, those structures have some features in common. Many of the larger executive departments, for instance, exercise a certain quasi-judicial power—as in Boards of Contract Appeals. Many of the larger departments promulgate rules which can and do have the force of law, and may be regarded as performing a quasi-legislative function. A substantial number of government lawyers spend much of their time in litigation before these boards, the regulatory agencies, or the courts. However, for the most part, the day-to-day routine of the government lawyer is not typically of an adversary nature. Every legal decision necessarily raises the possibility that it may ultimately be attacked in some form or other; however, the decisions with which this paper will deal are not attacked so much in proceedings which are adversary as in those which are investigative. And the culmination, in general, tends to strengthen the executive, rather than the reverse, for time is on its side; the modern world is too complicated to be run by a legislature.

In Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, Emile Durkheim (1957: 50) explains that the state is the organ of a particular form of collective consciousness. This consciousness is not