In 1982, a set of strict new countermeasures against drinking-driving went into effect in California. Interrupted time series analysis is used to investigate the effect that these countermeasures have had on fatal accident levels during the first postintervention year. The results do not indicate that a deterrent impact occurred among those accidents. Supplementary analyses of injury accidents during the first postintervention year and of fatality accidents during the first nine months of 1983 add important qualifications to this basic finding.

This study is a reexamination of the effect of situational characteristics on police arrests in domestic disturbances. Using observational data, we replicate recent research based upon official police reports. We also consider the implications of variables not available in the earlier study, especially the role orientation of the intervening officer. The results support the previous finding that the arrest decision turns on situational cues, but it suggests that the salience of such factors differs for officers whose role orientations differ.

This paper investigates the role of “relational distance” between complainant and offender as a determinant of legal sanctions in juvenile status offender cases. After reviewing evidence suggesting that greater relational distance is associated with harsher sanctioning, I develop the case for an alternative “relational resource” hypothesis, which emphasizes that conflicts among proximate parties entail an intrinsic loss of resources for the accused. This hypothesis is supported by status offense data from four decision points in the juvenile justice system which show, with some variation across decision points, that youth who are the subject of parent-initiated complaints fare consistently worse than youth accused by the police. The available evidence suggests that this is not explained by the possibility that parental accusations only occur when behavior is especially serious. Analyses of temporary detention and court disposition data reveal higher-order interactions that suggest that the impact of the complainant's identity is partially contingent on the formality of agency procedures and on the family's circumstances.

Data from 300 homicides involving an aggravating felony were examined to determine what factors influence the prosecutor's decision to seek the death penalty. It was found that the race of the victim was significantly related to the decision to seek the death penalty even when several legally relevant factors were taken into account. The data also revealed that black killers of whites were more likely and black killers of blacks less likely to have the death penalty requested. A breakdown of homicides into those involving a single aggravating felony and those involving multiple felonies revealed that racial effects were stronger in the former category. There was some evidence that this difference in the effects of race reflected a different threshold of tolerance for white and black murders. Black victim homicides resulted in a death request only when they crossed a threshold of aggravation that was higher than that found for white deaths.

The concept of “reflexive law” contains two mutually contradictory elements: a doctrine of legal restraint and the notion that restraint can be achieved by procedural rather than substantive regulation. This critique argues that new procedures have historically not replaced substantive regulation but instead have repeatedly introduced more substantive and more formal regulations. Teubner's thesis that “reflexive law” manifests an “evolutionary tendency” is refuted, just as is the claim that his thesis could be inferred from sociological theories such as those of Luhmann or Habermas. As is so often the case in legal theory, “evolutionism” is used as a mask for the legitimation of presumably “progressive” legal ideas.

Involuntary commitment to mental hospitals has been a topic of scholarly interest for the last twenty years. That interest has resulted in dozens of studies which have informed the legal reform of many state commitment statutes. In this paper we analyze the organizational context in which the decision to commit takes place. Relying on observations of the commitment process in an urban setting, we discuss the negotiating among the actors involved in the decision to commit. Our data suggest that formal disposition to involuntarily commit accounts for only a small percentage of those held at the hospital against their will. Court procedures and professional persuasion are used to coerce citizens into “voluntary” stays at the hospital in order to avoid court proceedings. We conclude with some thoughts about the meaning of commitment rates in light of these findings.

Research on the implementation of criminal justice reforms, such as sentence guidelines, determinate sentence laws, and no plea bargaining policies, has proliferated in recent years. This research raises a variety of concerns about how one should evaluate the effectiveness of policy innovations. We deal here with recurring issues in the evaluation of criminal justice innovations, including the problem of specifying goals against which to measure “effectiveness,” the need to interpret research findings in light of theories about how criminal courts operate, and the importance of choosing appropriate time periods in which to conduct implementation or evaluation studies.

In this paper, we examine factors that affect whether the police are summoned to incidents of spousal violence. The actions of bystanders are distinguished from the actions of victims, and we find that victims and bystanders are moved by somewhat different influences. We also find that the immediate features of the situation dominate the decision to call the police and that many legitimate concerns are salient (e.g., whether there are injuries). In addition, however, some extralegal influences are important so that different offenders engaged in the same crime do not necessarily face the same risks of apprehension. For example, other things equal, bystanders are less likely to call the police if the offender and victim are living together.

In this rejoinder, I try to clarify and to develop further the concept of “reflexive law” by expanding its theoretical framework. I make use of the theory of autopoietic systems—a recently developed version of system theory. Legal autonomy and social autonomy turn out to be the crucial concepts. Their reformulation in terms of closed, self-referential, and self-reproductive structures leads to the core problem for a post-interventionist law: Can the law adapt its internal models of social reality to the autopoietic organization of legally regulated social systems?