This paper reappraises the value of situational and attitudinal variables as parts of a theory of police behavior. That situational factors affect officers' decisions to make arrests is well supported by empirical evidence; that officers' behavior is shaped by their attitudes and values is a common assumption even though it is supported only by weak empirical evidence. This analysis indicates that the theoretical utility of situational variables is limited for the most part to the arrest decision: Situational factors have modest effects on officers' choices among informal actions. Furthermore, the analysis shows that attitudinal variables fail to account for more than a very small part of the variation in behavior. A theoretical perspective on police behavior as administrative decisionmaking is consistent with these findings, and might redirect future research along more fruitful lines.

This paper examines the relationship between lynchings and executions of blacks in North Carolina and Georgia between 1882 and 1930 as well as before and after the political disenfranchisement of blacks in both states. The findings are used to assess two competing models of the relationship between these different types of lethal sanctioning. No supporting evidence is found for a “substitution model,” which predicts a negative relationship between lynchings and executions. The evidence for Georgia, especially for the pre-disenfranchisement period, does offer moderate support for the “conflict model,” which hypothesizes a positive association between lynchings and executions. Although the direction of the relationship between lynchings and executions was insensitive to disenfranchisement in both states, our analysis reveals that total lethal sanctioning (lynchings plus executions) did decline in Georgia after several restrictive voting statutes were implemented. No similar effect is observed for North Carolina.

This review essay integrates applicable elements of scholarly perspectives that in quite different ways deal with political and economic power, legal imperialism, and dependency. Representative examples of scholarly treatments of these subjects were chosen from analyses of families of law, critical legal studies, comparative legal systems, world system and dependency theory, and legal history. Most are modern or contemporary works, but a few were chosen from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century publications to trace changing modes and emphases upon the central theme of law and power.

The history of law and society studies in Korea is rather short. Although there were some precursors like Chong Yag-yong (1762–1836), who conducted pioneering legal studies on the basis of empirical methodology, the sociological perspective he pioneered unfortunately failed to flourish. As the momentum of spontaneous modernization, including the law in the late Yi dynasty (1392–1910), was frustrated by Japanese colonial rule, it was only after the liberation of the nation in 1945 that jurisprudence emerged as a subject of academic interest.

Sociology of law in the Chinese mainland is currently enjoying a revival. Since 1979 the legalization of Chinese society has been surging forward; legal theories, however, have made slow progress. Some approaches, such as “perplexity of jurisprudence” or “the crisis of Communist legal theory,” have revealed restlessness and reflection in law circles. Therefore, when a few young research workers raised the clarion call “Make a breach in doctrinairism through sociology of law,” a chord was struck in the hearts of many people. On September 12, 1987, the first national symposium for sociology of law was held under the auspices of the Law Department of Peking University and the Politics and Law Research Group in the Institute of Reform of the Economic System in China. Over three days, the fifty-three persons present from thirty organizations throughout the country submitted twenty-five papers to the symposium, decided on the Plan for Exchange and Research in Legal Sociology (abbreviated in English as PERLS), and discussed the tasks ahead. As of January 30, 1988, the membership of PERLS had reached 186 (including forty-one policy research workers of state organs and ten lawyers), and the number of research projects concerning sociology of law totaled six, scattered all over Beijing Municipality, Shanghai Municipality, and Jilin and Jiangxi provinces. The Institute of Comparative Law and Sociology of Law, Peking University, and the Shanghai Institute of Sociology of Law were established recently. In addition, there are also some new research organizations concerned, such as the Commission of Law Studies in the Chinese Association of Behavior Science, the Institute of Sociology and the Research Group of Legal Systems Science in China University of Political Science and Law, and the Institute of Legal Psychology in Nankai University. The reestablishment of sociology of law in China is directed and supported by Professor Zhao Zhen-jiang, chair of the law department of Peking University, and Professor Shen Zong-ling, head of the Institute of Comparative Law and Sociology of Law in the same university.