1 Black, Donald, The Behavior of Law 2 (New York: Academic Press, 1976), speaks of law as “governmental social control.” William J. Chambliss & Robert B. Seidman, Law, Order, and Power 3 (2d ed. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1982), distinguishing particular laws from legal order, define the latter as “a set of social relations governed by rules set down by the state.” Max Weber's definition, probably the most influential in the social sciences, turns on “the presence of a staff engaged in enforcement”; while this definition may cover at the margins normative orders supported by clan action or the leaders of a religious sect, the “staff” of enforcement is, under modern conditions, regularly part of the apparatus of the state. See Weber, Max, Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth & C. Wittich (New York: Westminster Press, 1968; originally published in 1922). This close connection of law and state action is also not necessarily denied by the definition of those scholars who for philosophic reasons seek to avoid a narrow focus on the coercion used in law enforcement and who try to maintain a conceptual link between moral and legal norms. This is, of course, not the place for a serious overview of definitions of the law; for an introduction see Jack P. Gibbs, Definitions of Law and Empirical Questions, 2 Law & Soc'y Rev. 429 (1968); Leopold Pospisil, Anthropology of Law: A Comparative Theory (New Haven, Conn,: HRAF Press, 1971); Lawrence M. Friedman, The Legal System: A Social Science Perspective (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1975); Chambliss & Seidman, supra.Google Scholar

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