Making Law

"... a distinct, broad, but compelling framework for examining a variety of laws and social policies." --Legal Studies Forum

"... a very rich volume that has something to offer to many different tastes... an excellent companion to the main textbook in a large undergraduate law-and-society course." --Contemporary Sociology

No issue has captured the imagination of social scientists and legal scholars more consistently than the creation of laws. The political implications of the study of law and society often create ideological diatribes with little attention to empirical detail. In this book, legal scholars, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists join in an attempt to develop and refine a structural theory of law.

Legal scholars, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists join in an attempt to develop and refine a structural theory of law.

WILLIAM J. CHAMBLISS is Professor of Sociology at George Washington University and author of On the Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents; Law, Order and Power (with Robert Seidman); Organizing Crime (with Alan Block); Exploring Criminology; and more than a dozen other books in the sociology of law, sociological theory, and criminology. MARJORIE S. ZATZ is Associate Professor of Justice Studies at Arizona State University and author of Robes and Sandals: Producing Legality in Revolutionary Cuba.

Preface: Marjorie S. Zatz

Acknowledgments

PART I. Structural Contradictions

1. On Lawmaking

William J. Chambliss

2. The Creation of Criminal Law and Crime Control

William J. Chambliss

3. The Political Economy of Opium and Heroin

William J. Chambliss

4. The Contradictions of Corrections: An Inquiry into Nest Dilemmas

Raymond J. Michalowski

5. Anti-Democratic Legislation in the Service of Democracy: Anti-Racism in Isreal

Ephraim Tabory

PART II. Ideology

6. Structural Contradictions and Ideological Consistency: Changes in the Form and Content of Cuban Criminal Law

Marjorie S. Zatz and James H. McDonald

7. Worker Safety, Law, and Social Change: The Italian Case

Kitty Calavita

8. Understanding the Emrgence of Law and Public Policy: Toward a Relational Model of the State

Nancy A. Wonders and Frederic I. Solop

PART III. Conflicts and Dilemmas

9. The Contradictions of Immigration Lawmaking: The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

Kitty Calavita

10. Toward a Class-Dialectical Model of Power: An Empirical Assessment of Three Competing Models of Political Power

J. Allen Whitt

11. State-Organized Crime

William J. Chambliss

12. State-Organized Homicide: A study of Seven CIP Plans to Assassinate Fidel Castro

Mark S. Hamm

PART IV. Strategies and Triggering Events

13. Social Structure, Crime, and Politics: A Conflict Model of the Criminal Law Formation Process

Edmund F. Mcarrell and Thomas C. Catellano

14. Other People's Money Revisited: Collective Embezzlement in the Savings and Loan and Insurance Industries

15. Structural Contradictions and th production of New Legal Institutions: The Transformation of Industrial Accident Law Revisited

Ryken Grattet

PART V. Conclusions

16. Future Diretions

Marjorie S. Zatz and William J. Chambliss

Contributors

Index