One of the traditional themes running through the literature on urban renewal is that the residents of urban renewal areas are universally opposed to being relocated. Relocation is described as being destructive of community subcultures which provide a viable social milieu for the residents. It is argued that the term “slum,” denoting a disorganized social structure and apathy on the part of the residents, is a misnomer (Gans, 1962; Jacobs, 1961; Glaser, 1968). Urban renewal areas, it is said, represent unified neighborhoods for some ethnic groups, though not for all (Gans, 1965: 30-31). Among the most eloquent spokesmen for this point of view have been those who researched and made famous Boston's West End. Thus Herbert Gans wrote of the feelings of urban renewal victims (Gans, 1965: 29):

The subject matter of field research in urban legal studies is as broad or as narrow as we choose to define the field. The chief concern of this paper is research strategies. What type of research is a law school capable of doing? What type of research is appropriate—for a professional school that is part of a university and for a student body that is growing increasingly bored and frustrated at what it regards as an irrelevant curriculum?

Since group violence is but one of several means of conducting conflict, explanation for its occurrence must be embedded in a comprehensive theory of conflict. Yet violent conflict is so topical and important that an effort to reflect on it sociologically is well worth undertaking at this time even in the absence of a comprehensive theory of social conflict. Indeed, Max Weber (1947: 133) has written that “the treatment of conflict involving the use of physical violence as a separate type is justified by the special characteristics of the employment of this means and the corresponding peculiarities of the sociological consequences of its use.” In this essay, I shall avoid definitional and typological exercises, and concentrate rather on specific, testable hypotheses and empirical uniformities of group violence that have been put forward and commented upon at various times. I shall also present some data and findings bearing on the hypotheses that, while not “testing” them in rigorous fashion, will do more than simply provide plausible illustrations that can always be found whenever a large body of historical and contemporary cases is carefully searched. The final aim of the paper is to link up these hypotheses and uniformities in more systematic fashion than is presently available although the paper does not spell out a systematic theory of group violence. At this stage of theory when a plausible case can be made for a large number of hypotheses, it is important to spell out the specific conditions under which specific hypotheses are thought to be applicable.

One welcome by-product of a major comparative study of recent state constitutional conventions has been a series of interviews with the judges who served as convention delegates. They are particularly interesting, not only because of the paucity of interviews with sitting judges, but because they permit us to directly compare the attitudes of judges with those of other political elites. To date, this has not been possible.

Some standard conflicts seem to appear again and again in the relationship between law and medicine. Lawyers are accused of showing undue concern for the past, for formalities, for retribution, and for deterrence, as well as having a basic lack of skill in the handling of human needs. Medical people are accused of disregarding law and the needs of society, and also of often overstepping individual rights in their eagerness as “good-doers.” Imperialists within both camps demand more scope for their particular approach. Delinquents, drinkers, psychopaths, or drug abusers—a continuous battle rages between these major professions as to whom these problems belong. There are property claims in human and social problems as well as in land.

The central theme of this paper concerns the difficult question of whether the use of force, and, generally, the coercive character of a political regime stimulates or inhibits the occurrence of political strife and violence. More specifically, two questions are raised: First, what is the relationship between the degree of regime coerciveness and the amount of violence experienced within political systems? Second, in what way does the consistency or inconsistency with which force is applied affect internal political stability and turmoil?

We are in the midst of a quickening, if inchoate, dispute as to whether Americans are an inherently violent people. Whatever the merits of this metapsychological discussion, there is no disagreement that Americans have a propensity to interpret both officially and unofficially the violence we do have (Waskow, 1966; Silver, 1968). The final report of the “violence commission” stands in this tradition, and by its size and scope, taken together with its supporting studies, aspires to culminate it.

The “marihuana problem” has rapidly degenerated into the “marihuana muddle.” As the use of marihuana increases, and as this use expands into the middle and upper classes, officials are increasingly confronted with questions concerning the effects and dangers of marihuana. Unfortunately, the answers that can be given are limited. We really do not know very much about marihuana. Perhaps the most decisive point that can be made is that the possession and sale of marihuana are against the law.

The police in several Western countries have been the object of a good deal of dissatisfaction lately, whether in open confrontation with rioters and demonstrators, or as the object of severe criticism by the courts and civilian review boards. Since the respect and cooperation of the public are essential for effective police operation–in reporting crimes, assisting officers, testifying in court, or in less direct ways–police departments have begun to turn their attention to the sources of this tension. Simultaneously, this problem has become a focus of study for a number of social scientists (see, for example, Banton, 1964; Bordua, 1967; Cumming et al., 1965; Gardiner, 1969; Goldstein, 1963; Gourley, 1954; Skolnick, 1966; and Wilson, 1968). We have undertaken a study of some aspects of the relationship between the police and the public in Israel, in the context of a wider series of studies on patterns of contact between bureaucratic organizations and their clients. There may be factors in this relationship which are not evident in other countries; for example, Israeli police are organized on a national basis with centralized control rather than by local departments as in the American system, and the Israeli police are integrated with the national security effort. These very differences, however, may clarify some fundamental elements of the police-public encounter in general.

The most frequent and visible sources of judicial policy are decisions in court cases in which judges create new solutions to problems and conflicts presented to them. Sometimes important policies are established in a single case or policy may develop gradually in a series of cases dealing with similar situations. This form of policy-making frequently occurs without much direct interaction between courts, legislatures, and executive agencies. Though the implementation of court policies may depend on the cooperation of other officials, the initiation and early shaping of a particular policy may be done almost exclusively by the courts.

Political scientists until recently have ignored the study of the process involved in complying with Supreme Court decisions. As Richard M. Johnson (1967: 4) has stated, to neglect such studies “is to neglect an indispensable segment of the total judicial process.” Despite the increasing awareness of the importance of this aspect to the judicial process, there are still almost no studies which attempt a comparative analysis of patterns of compliance with or resistance to Supreme Court decisions.

Attempts to understand the etiology of crime, delinquency, and other forms of deviance have approached these complex phenomena in a number of ways. In terms of the unit' under study, these methods can be summarized as follows: (1) delinquent gangs (see, for example, Thrasher, 1927; Yablonsky, 1959; and Short, 1968) or other deviant groups, for example the Mafia (Lewis, 1964; Allen, 1962); (2) particular deviants, like marijuana users (Becker, 1963) or thieves (Sutherland, 1963); (3) particular types of deviants over time, such as sociopathic delinquents (Robins, 1966); (4) delimited areas of a city compared to other areas on rates of delinquency, crime, or mental illness (Faris and Dunham, 1939; Shaw and McKay, 1942; McKay, 1967); and (5) comparisons of crime rates for cities (Ogburn, 1935; Schuessler and Slatin, 1964). Studies of the total pattern of deviance within a city are lacking. Such a study, with the goal

Several philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists have recently begun to reexamine the problem of explanation in social science. Instead of describing man in terms of organized traits, needs, drive-cathexes, coping and defense mechanisms, or self-actualizing tendencies, the new movement is concerned with “man as rule follower.” This paper outlines the essentials of such an approach (nomotics—from the Greek nomos, “law, convention”–refers to the study of human rule systems), beginning with an examination of four behavior systems which can be conceptualized as networks of rule-governed activities. We describe some key properties of rule systems, point out certain important differences in the manners in which they are used, and suggest methods for studying rule systems in general. We also present an analysis of the topic of obedience, a central factor in the operation and preservation of any given system.

Very different assumptions guide the efforts of social scientists and comparative legal scholars interested in the development process. These assumptions form paradigms; the paradigms guide and structure research problem selection, choices of concepts to be used, and even the form and content of evidence held to be admissible. For instance, a political scientist may treat the legal system of a transitional society as the outgrowth or a function of cultural, social, economic, and political environment, but the legal scholar may not be comfortable with this wholly dependent placement of his analytic slice of “reality.” Social scientists increasingly accept basic aspects of the value system of science. This requires a concern for making generalizations which may be linked to theoretical constructs, and which are empirically testable in such a way as to allow intersubjective evaluation. Description, explanation, and prediction are typically cited as a social scientist's aims. “Relevance” is a term we hear much of today, but unless a social scientist is content to ignore the imperatives of the value system of science, relevance must remain a fundamental, from that of the social scientist. A. Singham's work furnishes an opportunity to reflect on these considerations.

This essay was done as part of a larger bibliographic project on the ethnography of law, begun by Laura Nader and her students at the University of California in the early 1960s. A summary of the results of this project was published in 1966 under the title “The Ethnography of Law: A Bibliographic Survey” (Nader et al., 1966). This work's more than 700 entries surveyed the literature on customary law in seven continental areas—Africa, Asia, the Near East, Europe, Oceania, and the Americas—as they were in 1964-1965. With the help and encouragement of the original compilers, the work of revising and updating the earlier bibliography was begun. This work is still in progress. However, to stimulate further suggestions for the project, we have written this summary of trends in the literature on customary law. The summary retains the division of the earlier bibliography into major continental areas, together with a section on comparative, general, and theoretical works.