Any relatively stable polity must possess means for converting many, if not most, demands made on political authorities into satisfying outputs, whether material or symbolic. Failure to cope with pressing demands might lead to a severely dysfunctional loss of public support for particular officials as well as for the regime itself. On the other hand, efforts to meet demands through blatant violations of accepted rules can also cause great loss in public support.

The revolution of April 1965, and the subsequent landing of United States military forces focused an enormous amount of worldwide attention on the Dominican Republic. The frequently chaotic revolution, which quickly became a civil war, was made still more confusing by reports which at one and the same time referred to one side as the “rebels” or “constitutionalists” and to the other as the “loyalists” or “anti-constitutionalists.” As the events of Dominican revolt, civil war, and United States intervention became disentangled, however, it became clear that the issue of “the constitution” and “constitutionalism” and the principles and forces of which these terms were symbols were perhaps even more important than any of the personalities or groups involved. Because many of the major conflicts seemed to revolve around questions of “constitutionalism,” a comparison and analysis of the constitutions of 1962 and 1963 may help unravel the perplexing tangle of factors which led to revolution and civil war.

For over two thousand years, the science of law has been a dull esoteric subject, with traditional logic its long suit and the syllogism its ace in the hole. The erudite tended to empathize with Socrates, who could define justice only in metaphysical terms, and to scorn the occasional iconoclasts in the Thrasymachian tradition, who would have operationalized the concept of justice on the basis of political interrelationships of power and influence. Throughout these two millennia, jurisprudence was a “science” only in the sense of “moral science,” that is to say, it was a branch of philosophy. It was concerned with prescriptive norms rather than with descriptions of human action, and therefore it dealt almost exclusively with ideals for, rather than with the realities of, the behavior of judges, lawyers, jurors, and litigants.

Two fundamental questions for any discipline are: (1) What is the subject matter of the field? and (2) What is to be asked about the subject matter? The answer to the first question as it applies to jurisprudence can be given in a word—law. This designation may appear as a gross oversimplification, but that is not the problem at all. If there were consensus in jurisprudence as to a universal and empirically applicable definition of law, the term would be suited admirably for identifying the subject matter of the field. But such consensus is lacking. Debates over conceptions of law have an ancient history, and since the end of the eighteenth century they have become more intense. Given the fact that contemporary schools of thought in jurisprudence are distinguished first and foremost by the kind of definition of law advocated, it is difficult to understand Selznick's assertion that definitions of law “are not really so various as is sometimes suggested.” To the contrary, one would be hard pressed to identify a more controversial issue in either jurisprudence or the sociology of law.

There is an age-old controversy over the relative importance and feasibility of formal and informal controls of human behavior. One body of theory, most notably the Sumner tradition, has held that control by formal laws is unimportant and dependent compared to controls by other means: “Acts of legislation come out of the mores. … Things which have been in the mores are put under police regulation and later under positive law. … The regulations must conform to the mores, so that the public will not think them too lax or too strict.”

The political ideologies, identifications, affiliations, participation, contribution to campaign funds, government employment, seeking and holding office, and other aspects of the political behavior of incumbents of various occupations, professions and strata have been investigated. There are also some discussions of the political power of professions, almost exclusively concerned with the legal and medical groups. But the study of professional associations as political pressure groups and their impact on the formulation and administration of the law has been relatively neglected. Professions are prominent among the many pressure groups actively pressing claims upon and through government, attempting to have a part in shaping any public policy that affects their interest. There is ample suggestion in the literature that major portions of their efforts are directed toward the state licensure and practice laws.

The call for studies of the social impact of particular judicial, legislative, administrative and executive rules, decisions and practices is sounded sporadically and acted upon but rarely. To read the recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States overruling established precedents in many areas of our constitutional law is to catalogue a long list of missed opportunities for social scientists. As an example of the cause for this lament, I shall present Keyishian v. Board of Regents which for all practical purposes overruled Adler v. Board of Education.

The controlled experiment is undoubtedly the ideal instrument for testing the effectiveness of a new rule of law or legal procedure: have one random half of the cases operate under the new rule, the other half under the old rule, and see what difference there is in the outcome.

By way of introducing this column, I should like to sketch briefly a picture of the major current programs which have developed under the aegis of the Russell Sage Foundation. These impressions are based on a review of grant applications and annual reports on file with the Russell Sage Foundation, on my own experiences working at Berkeley and at Denver, and on visits by my New York University colleagues to the Sage-sponsored centers at Wisconsin and Northwestern.