In the last issue of this journal I asked, “What has social science to offer law?” When asking the converse (what has law to offer social science?), there is a repeated need for definition and translation: What social science? What law?

The changing of the editorial guard is an occasion that compels—not merely suggests—some stocktaking. One who essays to fill any role formerly performed by Richard Schwartz does well to plan carefully.

Almost two decades ago Reisman (1951) published an article in which he criticized the lawyer for his ethnocentric view of law and invited the anthropologist to study the organization and functions of American legal institutions and the activities of lawyers. Very few anthropologists have done so. In fact, few anthropologists have made the general study of law their special area of research. In this country, there are perhaps a dozen or two. However, the field is now beginning to attract more people. As a look at the tables of contents and the indexes of ethnographic monographs published in recent years will show, most anthropologists still neglect to report on the law of the people they have studied—yet rarely fail to have chapters on social organization, economy, religion, and the remaining traditional categories with which we “domainize” the culture of a society. Legal scholars, on the other hand, often in cooperation with sociologists and political scientists, have increasingly turned to the kind of research which Schubert (1968) has called, “behavioral jurisprudence.” Outside the United States, this interdisciplinary focus in the study of law and society has been very productive in Scandinavia (see Blegvad 1966).

Legal scholars come to the problem of development somewhat tardily. But legal systems are clearly a part of political, social, and economic development, just as are educational systems and other areas of the culture. No major social change occurs or is put into effect in a society which is not reflected in some kind of change in its laws. Legal institutions are responsive to social change; moreover, they have a definite role, rather poorly understood, as instruments that set off, monitor, or otherwise regulate the fact or pace of social change. Many basic questions of the relationship of law to social change and to cultural development are completely neglected. Does the type of legal system and legal institutions that a society uses help or hinder that society in its march toward modernization? How does law influence the rate of economic growth? How does law brighten or darken the road to political wisdom or stability? How can a society improve its system of justice? What happens when laws are borrowed from more advanced countries?

The considerable literature on Eskimo law is replete with contradictory descriptions of matters such as the functions of leadership, the imposition of sanctions, the involvement of the community as a whole in juridical matters, and the presence or absence of specific methods of conflict resolution. Rather than accuse certain ethnographers of error, I would judge that all the well-known accounts are substantially accurate.

This paper presents a discussion of the revitalization processes of the peace pact system of intervillage relations among the Kalinga mountaineers of northern Luzon by means of celebrations given by the system's key personnel, the peace pact holders. Revitalization here refers on the one hand to the ways in which these celebrations regenerate support for the peace pact system, reinforce obedience to peace pact law, and strengthen the obligations of the people to the personnel of the system. On the other hand, revitalization refers to the reaffirmation and reformulation of peace pact law, which ensures the continuing effectiveness, validity, and relevance of the peace pact system to the changing world of the Kalinga. The revitalization processes inherent in peace pact celebrations have not been studied by earlier students of the Kalinga, yet close observation reveals this built-in revitalization to be a basic feature in the operation of the system.

Generally, studies in legal anthropology have tended to focus on the codes, written or unwritten, by which behavior is regulated in human societies and on the regularized processes by which conflicts are resolved in accordance with these codes. Thus, in considering a cross-cultural operational definition of law, Nader (1965: 6) notes that all societies have rules governing behavior, some preferential and some prescribed.

Nowhere is this general tendency expressed by Brandeis more prominent than in the area of criminal law. In spite of the reasoned warnings of some writers, we are greeted by a continuous stream of books and articles from psychiatrists and psychoanalysts (and their judicial followers) with one common theme: Criminal punishment is an unscientific survival of barbarism and must be replaced by a system of individual and social therapy. To believe otherwise is to be unscientific and (if the distinction is recognized) immoral.