The scale of the quantitative changes in the legal profession of the United States described by Curran seems to be not unusual in the Western industrialized world. Many countries have similarly experienced large increases in the absolute number of lawyers, the ratio of lawyers to population, and the proportions of comparatively young and inexperienced lawyers and women lawyers. Nevertheless, the United States remains unusual in its high proportion of lawyers in private practice.

In this paper, I examine two explanatory models for prison violence. In the first, the crowding model, violence is said to arise from the cognitive confusion and tension induced by crowded conditions. In the second, the social control model, violence is seen as one among several important control mechanisms deeply rooted in the social order of prison life. While these models are clearly not mutually exclusive, they have taken researchers along quite distinct paths. I consider three forms of violence in the Texas prison system: homicide, inmate-inmate assaults with weapons, and inmate-staff assaults. My results, which support the control model over the crowding model, have several methodological and policy implications.

Recent perceptual studies of general deterrence have been guided by an unnecessarily narrow conception of general deterrence, despite the methodological advances in this type of research. These studies, moreover, have failed to recognize the complexity of the perceptual processes that intervene between the threat or experience of legal sanctions and behavioral outcomes. Consequently, the conclusions drawn from the findings about the process of general deterrence are questionable. This paper critically reviews perceptual studies of general deterrence with a view toward expanding the scope of deterrence theory and stimulating research in new directions. Suggestions are made about the kinds of data and analyses needed to test such theory more adequately.

This study examines the interim and final dispositions of 379 criminal cases involving mentally disordered defendants. The findings indicate that a history of mental health problems tends to elicit a lenient penal sanction, even in the face of a criminal history. Furthermore, these findings show that the court used its authority to impose mental health treatment on criminal defendants as often as it imposed punishment.

In the research from which this paper is derived, we have observed and tape-recorded approximately 115 lawyer-client conferences. Our observations were made in two sites, one in California and one in Massachusetts. In this paper we take an in-depth look at the nature of lawyer-client discourse by focusing on one conference. We explore three of the most important themes in that discourse. First is the discussion and characterization of the legal system and its major actors. Next is the exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of disposing of disputed issues through negotiation or trial. Finally, the third theme involves the “legal construction of the client,” where a lawyer and client discuss rules of relevance that govern the legal process as well as the aspects of the client's experience that are to be the subject of legal inquiry. The paper concludes by exploring the way each of these themes expresses or embodies prevailing legal ideologies and influences the way cases develop and are managed.

This study uses data from courtroom observations and posttrial interviews with jurors who served in thirty-eight actual sexual assault trials. It addresses three issues: (1) the effects of several measures of evidence on jurors' judgments of a defendant's guilt, (2) the relative merits of jurors' recollections of the evidence and measures of evidence coded at trial by trained observers, and (3) whether the effects of jurors' attitudes toward crime and their sentiments toward victims and defendants depend on the strength of the evidence, as Kalven and Zeisel (1966) contended. We find that both trial- and juror-level measures of evidence adequately capture the effects of evidence, and that neither measure is inherently preferable. Also, while jurors were influenced by extralegal factors, these effects were largely limited to weak cases in which the state presented little hard evidence, which is consistent with Kalven and Zeisel's “liberation hypothesis.”

Social scientists have long been skeptical of the power of the threat of legal sanctions, as invoked by enacted laws, to control behavior. This skepticism has been supported by the failure of empirical studies, especially those based on official records of crimes and of the apprehension of offenders, to provide convincing evidence of the deterrent effect of legal penalties. The possibility that an experimental design might avoid the defects of other studies of deterrence has been suggested, and for this purpose, traffic law and its enforcement are especially salient. This paper reports on such a field experiment, which resulted in the conclusion that an increased threat of legal punishment, albeit a relatively small fine, reduced by one-half the number of customary offenders.

While Max Weber is revered as one of the patron saints of the law and society movement, his views on the nature and limits of sociological studies in law are not fully understood. Using recent analyses of Weber's legal thought (Kronman, 1983) and overall social theory (Alexander, 1983a), the author argues that while Weber set forth the standard, positivist understanding of the sociology of law that influences research to this day, at the same time he critiqued this understanding and in the end despaired that social science could contribute significantly to human emancipation. Arguing that Weber's tragic modernism is an inappropriate guide for law and society studies today, the author suggests an alternative vision in which the sociology of law is seen as part of a pragmatic enterprise of social transformation.

In a recent study of small claims mediation and adjudication in an Ontario court, Vidmar introduced the concept of “admitted liability” (1984). He argued that it is this case characteristic and not the forum type that accounts for the greater likelihood of accommodative settlements in mediation than in adjudication, as well as the higher rates of compliance with mediated outcomes. This article reanalyzes some of Vidmar's data in conjunction with both previously reported and new data about small claims cases in Maine. We conclude that the forum type remains a stronger predictor of case outcome and compliance than any case characteristic. However, the data do support Vidmar's alternative hypothesis that case characteristics help specify the relationships between forum type, on the one hand, and outcome and levels of compliance on the other.

This paper summarizes the findings of a four-pronged research project concerning the behavior of Dutch divorce lawyers, in which lawyers, judges, and clients were interviewed and lawyer-client interaction directly observed. In the first part, some preliminary remarks are made on the practical and theoretical importance of the actual behavior of divorce lawyers and the existing body of research on lawyer behavior. These are followed by a thumbnail sketch of Dutch divorce law and procedure and the role of the lawyer. The second part gives an overview of our own research findings. In the third part, I present some reflections on the role of lawyers in divorce cases: (1) the character and special place of ‘normative, conflict-oriented intervention’ in divorce conflict; (2) lawyers' objective of a ‘reasonable divorce’ and the nonadversarial approach of lawyers to divorce litigation; (3) lawyers as two-way ‘transformation agents’ between the client and the law; and (4) what lawyers actually do and do not do.