Amici 

Newsletter of the Sociology of Law Section
American Sociological Association

Volume 5, Number 2   (Spring, 1998)

***********************************************************************

In this issue...

     In addition to news about section activities, and a listing of 
several recent publications in sociology of law, this issue contains some 
thoughtful material to 'chew" on.  One is a discussion of issues in the 
teaching of Sociology of Law by Alfredo Montalvo.

      In addition, several people submitted responses to Donald Black's 
pleas against the "lawyerization" of the sociology of law.  Mary Pat 
Baumgartner organized the collection of three of these, Black's response 
to these, and Philip Selznick submitted a response directly to the 
editorial office.

***********************************************************************


Section Prizes Awarded

      Every year at the ASA Annual Meeting, the Sociology of Law Section 
awards prizes for outstanding new work in the field.  The most recent 
recipients of the Distinguished Article Award, announced in Toronto last 
August, are Donald Black and Arthur Stinchcombe.  Black was recognized 
for his paper "The Epistemology of Pure Sociology", which contains a 
blueprint for a radically scientific approach to the study of law and 
other social phenomena.  The paper appeared in Law and Social Inquiry in 
the Summer of 1995.  Stinchcombe was recognized for his paper "Lustration 
as a Problem of The Social Basis of Constitutionalism," which appeared in 
Law and Social Inquiry in the Winter of 1995.  His piece addresses the 
role of law in the transition of power from one governmental structure to 
another.  The Committee which selected the recipients included Ronen 
Shamir (Chair), Penelope Canan, Kevin Delaney, Peter Manning, and Kim 
Scheppele.  Black was present for the awarding of the prize and delivered 
a short lecture entitled "On Being Impossible".  A lively discussion 
followed.
 
      Two students were also honored for their work, each receiving a
Student Paper Prize.  Brian Gran of Northwestern University was awarded
the graduate student prize for his paper "A Bugaboo of Social Policy: The
Influence of Legal Systems on Public Pension Development."  The
Undergraduate Student Prize went to Megan Morgan of Flinders University of
South Australia for her honors paper entitled "Battered Woman Syndrome:
Women's Experiences, Expert Evidence, and Legal Discourse."  The Student
Paper Prize Committee included Christopher Uggen (Chair), Elizabeth
Chambliss, Cathy Connolly, and Richard Leo. 


********************************************************************



		  On Teaching the Sociology of Law

			by Alfredo Montalvo 
		Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 
			Emporia State University


      During, my years as a Ph.D. student, I became fascinated with the
study of the interconnection between law and society. My discovery of Max
Weber's sociology of law marked a turning point, after years of intense
exposure to Marxism. I received the Weberian ideas on law with skepticism,
but also with excitement.  I found myself happily engaged in an
intellectual struggle to harmonize Weber's ideas on the law with my
Marxist background. Having vested so much energy, I volunteered to teach
my first law and society course. I was determined to bring my intellectual
curiosity and enjoyment to the classroom. 

      At this point, finding a suitable textbook for the course became a
major frustration. In fact, the one I finally adopted didn't work. The
book was organized around the contributions of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim,
to the study of the law. As it turned out, developing a law and society
course based on the intellectual traditions of these three "masters" of
sociological thought was a tremendous mistake. The text lacked analytical
content, and I found myself spending a significant number of hours
introducing my students to critically thinking about the ideas of the
aforementioned thinkers. I enjoyed playing with sociological ideas on law
in the classroom but few of my students were able (or willing) to join me. 

      During the past three years, however, I have begun to organize the
course around the theme of the dialectical relationship between law and
justice. This approach has generated student interest and added an
excellent analytical component to the course.  Moreover, the book Justice
v. Law by Eugene Hickok and Gary L.McDowell proved to be excellent. It not
only introduces students to the analysis of the tension between law and
our quest for justice, but it also introduces them to the politics behind
the law. In addition, I have added a case study component to the course,
requiring students to brief legal cases bearing upon issues of gender,
race, individual rights, and so forth. This focus excites students,
liberates them from the myth that law is inaccessible, and encourages them
to critically examine the political-ideological foundations of the law. 

      Finally, I should comment on my attempts to bring a global
perspective to the law and society course. I must admit that this has 
been a real pedagogical challenge for me. To my knowledge, there are no 
texts exploring the law from a global perspective. During the 1970s and 
1980s, a group of legal scholars (e.g., Francis G. Snyder, James A. 
Gardner, Yash Ghai, Robin Luckham, John H. Merryman) published 
extensively on the link between law and economic (under)development and 
dependency in Latin America and Africa. Unfortunately, mainstream texts 
often ignore the theoretical and empirical contribution of these studies, 
and the authors conform to the traditional objectified and mechanical 
views of the (American) law. This treatment of the law makes issues of 
social justice largely irrelevant to the understanding of law and the 
legal order. 

      Given the lack of a global perspectiveon law and society, a 
possible alternative might be to use a cross-national perspective for the 
understanding of law. Erika Fairchild's Comparative Criminal Justice 
Systems (1993), and Donald J.Shoemaker's (ed.) International Handbook on 
Juvenile Justice (1996) are probably two of the most comprehensive 
presentations of the law from an international perspective. Both sources 
provide important insights into the historical and political nature and 
operation of law in different societies but they are limited because of 
their narrow focus on criminal law. As such, they are suitable for 
criminal justice courses, or as supplemental readings in a law and 
society course. Pedagogically, a proper crossnational understanding and 
presentation of the criminal system to students will require an indepth 
understanding of the historical and cultural developments of different 
societies and their legal implications.  Simply exposing students to the 
systematic aspects of the criminal law of other societies without a 
critical evaluation of their historical and cultural background poses a 
risk of reinforcing students' stereotypical and ethnocentric views of the 
criminal systems of different countries.  

      In sum, the development of a global or international perspective of 
the  law will require a critique of the core values associated with  
traditional notions of law--particularly the emphasis on legal 
rationality  and the rule of law. Steps in this direction have already 
been taken by  dependency and critical studies scholars. Future law and 
society texts will have to borrow from the theoretical and conceptual 
contributions of these scholars, and from those of other disciplines and 
study areas (e.g., economics, political science, international relations) 
that directly or indirectly address criminal and civil legal aspects of 
globalization (e.g., NAFTA, the U.S arrest of Manuel Noriega, drug 
trafficking, and undocumented migration). Although this is a daunting 
task, the development of a global perspective of law is long overdue.


******************************************************************

                          RECENT PUBLICATIONS
                      Prepared by Matt Silberman

--------
ARTICLES
--------

William J. Chambliss and Justin Baer (1997).  "Generating Fear: The 
Politics of Crime Reporting" Crime, Law, and Social Change 27:87-107.

Mathieu Deflem, (1997) "Surveillance and Criminal Statistics: Historical 
Foundations of Governmentality." In Studies in Law, Politics and Society, 
eds. Sarat and Silbey, Volume 17.

Mathieu Deflem (1998), "The Boundaries of Abortion Law: Systems Theory  
from Parsons to Luhmann and Habermas." Social Forces  76.

Lauren B. Edelman and Mark C. Suchman (1997), "The Legal Environments of  
Organizations," Annual Review of Sociology: 479-515.

Sarah Gatson (1997), "Labor Policy and the Social Meaning of Parenthood," 
Law and Social Inquiry 22 (Spring):277-310. 

Mark C. Suchman (1997), "On Beyond Interest: Rational, Normative and  
Cognitive Perspectives in the Social Scientific Study of Law," Wisconsin  
Law Review 1997:475-501.

Mark C. Suchman and Mia L. Cahill (1996), "The Hired-Gun as Facilitator:  
The Case of Lawyers in Silicon Valley," Law and Social Inquiry 21:679-712.

Mark C. Suchman and Lauren B. Edelman (1996), "Legal Rational Myths: The  
New Institutionalism and the Law & Society Tradition," Law & Social  
Inquiry 21:903-941.

-----
BOOKS
-----

Laura Gomez, Misconceiving Mothers: Legislators, Prosecutors and the 
Politics of Prenatal Drug Exposure First in series on Gender, Family and 
the Law. (Temple University Press 1997). 

     Gomez uses the case study of "crack babies" to elaborate upon the 
constructionist approach to social problems, focusing on how the 
putatively new problem was institutionalized in two legal arenas.  The 
empirical investigation, focused on California, includes content analysis 
of newspapers, magazines, and scientific studies, review of documents, 
and interviews with legislative insiders (snowball sampling) and elected 
district attorneys (a targeted sample of 30 percent of the state 
counties). 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Kitty Calavita, Henry Pontell, and Robert Tillman, Big Money Crime:  
Fraud and Politics in The S & L Crisis (Univ. of California Press 1997). 

     Big Money Crime is an analysis of the crime involved in the savings 
and loan crisis of the 1980s, focusing on the structural conditions that 
set the stage for the disaster, the political system that greased the 
wheels, and the limitations of the criminal justice system that contained 
the response.  Relying on government documents, federal agency data sets, 
and extensive interviews, the authors argue that at the heart of the 
debacle was a specific type of corporate crime -- what we call 
"collective embezzlement," robbing one's own bank -- which may be the 
signature crime of the new finance capitalism, much as worker safety 
violations or product safety infractions were to manufacturing 
capitalism. 

---------------------------------------------------------------

Annamarie Oliverio, State Terror (SUNY Press, February 1998)

Oliverio's powerful appeal is to comprehend that it is the state, 
including especially the academy and the media, who serve their own 
interests by labelling, denouncing, and persecuting the powerless as the 
sources of "terrorism."  Concomitantly, Oliverio also appeals to our 
comprehension of how the same interested parties use this same power to 
shape our perceptions in their (largely successful) attempt to protect 
themselves from the terrorist label and other critiques and to exempt 
their polices from reform. -- Gunder Frank

----------------------------------------------------------------

Jerry Van Hoy, Franchise Law Firms and the Transformation of Personal 
Legal Services, (Quorum Books 1997.)

     The book is a study of the organization of work of lawyers and 
secretaries at franchise-style legal practices. It is based on 
observations and interviews in two large franchise firms. The book covers 
the rise of these firms, the experiences of staff at branch offices, and 
how the firms have changed in response to competition and changing 
markets. 

------------------------------------------------------------------

Martha K. Huggins, Political Policing: the United States and Latin 
America  (Duke University Press, forthcoming June 1998)

"Martha Huggins has written a major expose of the CIA's and AID's 
promotion of state terrorism through political murder, disappearances, 
and institutionalized torture by civil and military policy, and their 
affiliated death squads in Latin America.  Every American concerned about 
our country's role in the world should read this book."  -- Philip Agee, 
author of INSIDE THE COMPANY

"Written with scholarly precision and patriotic outrage, Political 
Policing is the most comprehensive investigation we have of the long and 
detestable U.S. involvement in police training in Latin America. Anyone 
who cares about the future of this hemisphere will want to read Professor 
Huggins' brilliant expose."  --Jack Langguth, Annenberg School for 
Communication at the University of Southern California, author of HIDDEN 
TERRORS. 

Editor's Note: Unless otherwise noted, descriptions were provided by the 
author(s).

******************************************************************

From the Law & Society Review   

Special Symposium Planned: Changing Employment Statuses in the Practice of
Law

     We are soliciting papers for an upcoming volume of the LAW & SOCIETY
REVIEW. Legal practice is characterized by diverse employment
relationships.  Some forms of occupation are entirely conventional and
well researched, others quite new, growing rapidly, and relatively
unstudied. The Law & Society Review is soliciting manuscripts devoted to
the study of these new employment statuses for legal practice including,
but not limited to, non-equity partners, special counsel, part-time,
contract, and temporary work, and the rising use of para-professionals. 
We encourage both quantitative and qualitative studies, international
comparative studies, as well as papers devoted to the theoretical
challenges that these new employment statuses present to our understanding
of professions and legal practice.  For example, what are the consequences
of global capitalism and organizational restructuring for the practice of
law?  How does competitive and bureaucratic professionalism reshape the
norms of legal practice?  What do new forms of management (e.g. management
by objectives, total quality control) contribute to the proletarianization
of professional occupation?  Finally, what relationships can be observe
between the employment statuses of lawyers and substantive law?  Papers
that consider the impact of these new statuses and forms of organization
on the careers of women or minority lawyers are especially welcome. 

Please submit papers by September 1, 1998  to Susan S. Silbey, Editor, 
Law & Society Review, Department of Sociology Wellesley College, 
Wellesley, MA 02181.

email:lsr-editorial-office@wellesley.edu; 781-283-2497.   All submissions 
will be subject to the conventional and time honored anonymous review 
procedures of the Law & Society Review. Nancy Reichman will serve as 
co-editor for this collection.

******************************************************************

Sociology of Law Mentoring Program

     The Sociology of Law Mentoring Program seeks to provide assistant 
professors in the sociology of law with a senior mentor at a different 
institution. Theidea is to offer assistant professors informal guidance 
on a wide variety of academic and institutional issues, although each 
mentor/mentee pair works out the parameters of their relationship. If you 
are interested in participating as a mentee or willing to serve as a 
mentor, please send e-mail to:  

Lauren Edelman at ledelman@uclink4.berkeley.edu. 

*****************************************************************


                            CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of WORK AND OCCUPATIONS on "Ethnicity, Race, and Gender in 
the Workplace"

GUEST EDITOR:  JENNIFER L. GLASS, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

     The increasing diversity of the workforce compels us to look at how 
ethnicity and gender intersect with other axes of stratification such as 
class in the placement, treatment, and collective life of workers. This 
special issue IS devoted to theoretical or empirical (qualitative and 
quantitative) articles that further our understanding of the interacting 
effects of ethnicity and gender on social inequality in the workplace. 

     Possible topics include, but are not limited to: ethnicity and 
gender in employment relations, organizational careers, and wage 
attainment; network ties, employer practices, and occupational 
segregation by ethnicity and gender; union organizing among race-ethnic 
minorities and women; employment in ethnic enclave economies; the 
politics and effectiveness of affirmative action and comparable worth; 
and legal and illegal immigration and employment issues. Short paper 
proposals can be sent now to Jennifer L. Glass, Department of Sociology, 
W140 Seashore Hall, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242 USA; 
jennifer-glass@uiowa.edu; fax: (319)335-2509.

     Completed papers should be sent to Jennifer Glass by December 1, 
1998 in order to receive full consideration.

***************************************************************

IS LEGAL SOCIOLOGY LAWYERIZED? FURTHER THOUGHTS

(This section submitted by Mary Pat Baumgartner)

     The last issue of AMICI contained a piece by Donald Black entitled 
"The Lawyerization of Legal Sociology."  In it, Black reflected on the 
recent evolution of the sociology of law.  He asserted that the field has 
failed to develop a distinctive scientific mission, instead being 
colonized andcoopted by those engaged in "lawyerly discourse," a form of 
scholarship that is not only unscientific but antiscientific.  Instead of 
seeking the explanation and prediction of facts, he claimed, legal 
sociology has tended to be proccupied with practical and moral issues.  
He contended that the ASA's Sociology of Law Section, although largely 
devoid of members with formal legal training, has "lawyerized" itself, 
deferring to the concerns and claims of law professors and legal 
practitioners.  As a result, Black conlcuded, "nothing new is likely to 
happen" in the work of the section.

     Recently, several members of the section were asked to respond to 
Black's arguments.  Three agreed to do so: James T. Richardson of 
University of Nevada, Debra Emmelman of Southern Connecticut State 
University , and James Tucker of the University of New Hampshire. Donald 
Black was then invited to respond to the responses.  The comments of all 
four individuals follow.

------------------------------------------------------------------

I. Black's Lament: Premature Pessimism and Severe Near-Sightedness

James T. Richardson, J.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology & Judicial Studies  
Director, Master of Judicial Studies Program
University of Nevada, Reno

     I teach judges in our University's masters program for trial judges, 
and interact on a regular basis with judges, lawyers, and law 
professors.  What is telling to me in terms of Black's lament is that I 
hear the exact opposite complaint on a regular basis from members of the 
legal profession, some of whom think their profession is being colonized 
by social scientists!  They yearn for the days when "the law as the law, 
and everybody knew it," and no one had the audacity to examine the way 
our legal system works from a sociological point of view.  These same 
judges and lawyers do not like to have to learn about the methods of 
science, particularly social science (after all, they say, "it is mostly 
just common sense"), but learn it they must if they are to understand and 
properly apply new criteria for use of scientific evidence in court.  
They are made very restless when a sociologist starts talking about the 
operation of the legal system, or doing comparative sociology of law, 
work that carries a clear implication that the way we do law in this 
country is but one of many possible ways, and that our way may not be the 
best.  

     Black is much too pessimistic and near-sighted in his essay, and 
does not take credit for the progress that has been made in the sociology 
of law, some of which he has contributed to himself with his provocative 
theoretical work.  I and others are developing his ideas and others in 
ways that are thoroughly sociological, with no holds barred, and we are 
impacting the legal profession in significant ways.  Certainly at a given 
professional meeting one can find examples of inane ideas and limited 
approaches.  But I for one believe that the pervasive imperialism of 
sociology is alive and well in the area of law, and I certainly give 
credit to The Donald for much of this progress.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

II. A Response to Donald Black's "The Lawyerization of Legal Sociology"

Debra S. Emmelman, 
Department of Sociology and Anthropology 
Southern Connecticut State University

     By denying that morals, values, policies as well as concepts of 
justice have any place whatsoever in the sociology of law, Donald Black 
overlooks some major postulates of socio-legal order put forth by the 
very theorists whom he cites as distinctly sociological.  Weber argued 
that the "ethic" of natural rights played a key role in bringing about a 
new legal system.  Durkheim argued that crime is an expression of the 
collective "conscience".  What are such principles if not a set of moral 
standards and values that create, however imperfectly, the reality of law 
in society?

     To insist that moral canons cannot be studied scientifically is to 
dismiss not only the value of esteemed predecessors' research but also 
the very legitimate interests of many contemporary legal sociologists.  
It is also to misconstrue the nature of science itself: science per se 
dictates neither one specific methodology nor one specific subject 
matter.  Similarly, while scientists dream, they do not all have the same 
dream: some dream of fame, others dream of finding cures, while others 
dream of discovering answers to fundamental questions.  Thus, I cannot 
help but wonder whether Donald Black laments less the so-called 
unscientific character of legal sociology and the loss of "its" dream 
than the rejection of his version of science and the loss of his dream.

-------------------------

III. Friends of the Court

James Tucker
Department of Sociology and Anthropology 
Director of Justice Studies 
University of New Hampshire

     AMICI--the title of this newsletter--is short for amici curiae, a 
Latin legal phrase meaning "friends of the court" (normally used in the 
singular, amicus curiae).  It refers to someone who files a brief in 
support of one of the adversaries in a dispute. And nothing better 
conveys the state of legal sociology that Donald Black bemoans in "The 
Lawyerization of Legal Sociology."  The field is riddled with advocacy 
and ideology.  Most sociologists of law seem to be concerned with justice 
more than the science of sociology.  They are, as Black contends, amateur 
lawyers.

        But, sadly enough, it must be acknowledged that legal sociology 
is not alone in this respect.  Much of sociology has the same ideological 
characteristic.  Look, for example, at recent issues of Contemporary 
Sociology (the ASA's "Journal of Reviews").  The editors have redefined 
the mission of sociology in political terms, and readers are now fed a 
steady diet of partisan commentary on welfare reform, affirmative action, 
and other public policy issues.  Symbolic of the politicization of 
Contemporary Sociology is the new cover that features a photograph from 
the early 1960s of a poor black woman staring into the camera and holding 
a sign that says "justice".  Legal sociology thus reflects the 
ideological nature of much of sociology as a whole.

     Perhaps sociology--including legal sociology--can recapture what 
Black calls the "dream" of science. The best bet for legal sociologists 
committed to science may be to start a new ASA section: The Scientific 
Sociology of Law.  This section would have a distinctly scientific 
mission unhampered by lawyerization.  In order to avoid problems 
experienced by the current Sociology of Law section, members would need 
to carefully protect the jurisdiction of their intellectual enterprise.  
They might choose to be unfriendly or even hostile to those who insist on 
engaging in lawyerly and non-scientific discourse.

     Meanwhile, genuine sociologists of law have no professional 
organization of their own.

-------------------------

IV. Donald Black Responds

     Donald Black was invited to comment on the responses to "The 
lawyerization of Legal Sociology," but instead would merely draw 
attention to what Max Weber calls the "almost inconceivable 
misunderstandings" about value neutrality in sociology.  He urges readers 
to consult Weber's discussions of this subject:  Weber, Max. 1917. "The 
meaning of ethical neutrality' in sociology and economics", Pgs. 1-47 in 
The Methodology of the Social Sciences. New York: Free Press, 1949.

Weber, Max. 1919. "Science as aVocation." Pgs. 129-156 in From Max Weber: 
Essays in Sociology, edited by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1958.

-----------------------------------------

TO THE EDITOR

Letter to the Editor from Philip Selznick

     Perhaps readers of AMICI would be interested in the following brief 
response to Donald Black's contribution in the Fall, 1997 issue.  
Professor Black argues that a lack of commitment to science, and the 
concomitant excessive "lawyerization" afflicts both "sociology of law" 
and "law and society".

     There is merit in these complaints, but they suffer from a narrow 
view of what scientific inquiry entails:

1.  Justice and knowledge.  Black faults legal sociologists for pursuing 
"justice instead of knowledge, value judgments instead of discoveries, 
interpretations instead of explanations."  However, justice depends on 
knowledge in many obvious as well as more subtle ways.  Our value 
judgments are improved if they are based on sound knowledge rather than 
raw preference or uncritical acceptance of received authority.  

     Nor can law and social science be concerned merely with "ordering 
facts."  Explanation and diagnosis require concern for relevant facts, 
and relevance is established by both theory and practice.

2. Law and jurisprudence.  Insofar as legal sociologists look only at 
problems set by lawyers, or act as mere fact-gatherers in legal research, 
Black has a point.  However, legal sociologists should be well-grounded 
in legal materials (as Weber and Durkheim were), if only because the 
"behavior" of, say, corporate law cannot be studied without knowing what 
the law says, e.g. about fiduciary responsibility or the rights of 
shareholders.  We may want to transcend positive law, but we cannot 
ignore it.

     As I have argued for many years, there is and should be a close 
connection between legal sociology and jurisprudence.  Jurisprudence 
includes much that goes beyond those conventional conceptions of law or 
legal process Black rightly says we should transcend.  Although H.L.A 
Hart and Lon Fuller are often counterposed, they are alike in offering 
understandings of law that open doors to sociological inquiry.

     It is indeed important to avoid being limited by the policy concerns 
and conceptual frameworks of the legal profession, including many law 
teachers.  It does not follow, however, that there are no legitimate 
continuities in the study of law, jurisprudence, and legal sociology.  If 
we fail to recognize these continuities, we may find that we have 
embraced scientism, not science.

     For recent statements of my views, see The Moral Commonwealth, esp. 
Chaps 1,4, and 15. 

********************************************************************

Introducing...

POLICING AND SOCIETY:   
An International Journal of Research and Policy

     Policing and Society is concerned with the activity of policing and 
the factors which affect it. A major part of this material will concern 
the police -- social scientific investigations of police policy, legal 
analyses of police powers and their constitutional status, and management 
oriented research on aspects of police organization -- but space will 
also be devoted to the relationship between what the police do and the 
policing decision and functions of community groups, private sector 
organizations and other state agencies. The journal will concern itself 
with the political economy of policing. As such it will be of interest to 
academics from most of the social science disciplines but also police and 
other practitioners involved in social regulation and control.

     Policing and Society provides a genuinely international forum and 
will have correspondents in most countries where there is a tradition of 
research and academic inquiry into all aspects of policing. The journal 
is committed to rigorous policy debate and the highest standards of 
scholarship.

MANUSCRIPTS / SUBSRIPTIONS

     For manuscript submission, and for further details on subscription 
to  the journal for your institution and/or privately, please get in  
touch with the Editor:  

James Sheptycki 
Centre for Law and Society, 
University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, 
Edinburgh EH8 9YL, UK 
Tel: 0131 650 2030;  
Fax: 0131 662 4902 
Email: J.Sheptycki@ed.ac.uk

*****************************************************************