The impact of United States Supreme Court decisions on the administration of criminal justice by police and lower courts in this country has been the subject of extensive research. A number of empirical studies on the impact of Mapp v. Ohio (1961) (Kuh, 1962; Oaks, 1970), Miranda v. Arizona (1966) (Reiss and Black, 1967; Yale Law Review, 1967), Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) (Blumberg, 1966; Sudnow, 1965) and in re Gault (1967) (Duffee and Siegel, 1971) have indicated that Supreme Court decisions have a much smaller impact upon police and court practices than might be expected and that systemic requirements of criminal justice agencies frequently override and suppress the policy objectives of these decisions. The result is the routinization of due process in a way which prevents its requirements from substantially interfering with the operation of the systems involved and the perversion of these requirements to serve organizational ends rather than the ends of justice. These studies raise substantial questions as to the efficacy of attempting to alter the operations of the criminal justice system through constitutional rule-making by the courts.

The social processes involved in the development of criminal laws have been studied by several scholars (Jeffery, 1957; Hall, 1952; Chambliss, 1964; Lindesmith, 1965; Sutherland, 1950; Becker, 1963). Generally, two major perspectives have guided these studies. One orientation has been the functionalist perspective (Pound, 1922, 1942; Durkheim, 1964) which stresses the emergence of moral consensus and the functional interdependence of the law with other institutions. Dicey (1920) suggests that public consensus is preceded by the origination of such ideas among elites, and is only later accepted by the mass of citizens. Such consensus, he claims, supplies the foundation for eventual legal change. An alternative view is the conflict . orientation (Quinney, 1970; Vold, 1958: 203-219; Engels, 1972; Laski, 1935) which views law as the instrument through which one interest group dominates another. In the development of workman's compensation laws, Friedman and Ladinsky (1967) trace the history of conflict and eventual accommodation between workers and factory owners.

Excessive drinking is involved in over one-half of the motor vehicle associated fatalities in the United States (Department of Transportation, 1968). Various means have been suggested, and some tried, to curb these losses. In only a few cases have countermeasures against driving while intoxicated been subjected to scientifically acceptable evaluation as to effectiveness.

In one such study, Barmack and Payne (1964b) used an information program with administrative review and psychiatric referral in an attempt to reduce alcohol-related crashes by airmen at an Air Force base. Based on their earlier studies (1964a) showing various types of stress-related and deviant behavior associated with driving while intoxicated, the image of the intoxicated driver as "sick" was communicated in meetings, on bulletin boards, and in the base newspaper. Airmen who lost time because of injury in a privately-owned vehicle had their service records reviewed, and evidence of "ineffective behavior" could result in discharge or psychiatric referral. The psychiatrist could then recommend a medical discharge, suggest psychiatric therapy, or take no action.

. . . [F] ear is being swept from the streets of somethough not all- American cities.

John Mitchell, September, 1971

New York Times, 1971: IV, 16

Enterprising police are making news rather than history in the preparation of their annual reports. Dry tabulations are giving way to charts, pictures, and other illustrations that catch the eye and tell the story of the problems and accomplishments of the department.

Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1966a: 58

During the 1960's, “crime in the streets” emerged as a major political issue. 1 Consequently, measurement of changes in the amount of crime also became politically important. As a candidate in 1968, Richard Nixon, recognizing this, proposed the use of the District of Columbia as a site for an evaluation of his anti-crime proposals by means of crime statistics: There is another area where the Federal Government has an opportunity to make a dramatic demonstration of its concern with the problem of crime, its commitment to new solutions and the efficacy of its proposals. That is in Washington, D.C.the nation's capital where the authority of the Federal Government is great and its prerogatives many. Washington, D.C. should be a model city as far as law enforcement is concerned-a national laboratory (New York Times, 1972).

A considerable amount of conflict has been generated over the selection of legal standards for legislative apportionment. Prior to 1962, seats in state legislatures were generally assigned to counties. In some houses of some state legislatures, a limited number of additional seats were given to the most populated districts. Population (size) was seldom used, however, either as the sole basis for designing districts or as the sole basis for determining the number of seats for given districts. With the development of the social force of urbanization, a limited number of counties became the residence for a majority of the citizens. Since state legislatures continued to operate with counties as the fundamental unit of legislative apportionment, significant differences in the population of districts were created.

In their admirable “Legal Evolution and Societal Complexity,” Professors Schwartz and Miller (1964: 161) expressed doubts about the validity of Durkheim's (1933: 68-174) well known generalization that repressive sanctions characterize a society based on organic solidarity; as distinct from one based on a complex division of social labour, in turn characterized by restitutive, rather than repressive, sanctions. Although Schwartz and Miller express considerable diffidence in their views on the invalidity of Durkheim's generalization, some later literature has taken their valuable study to be a “refutation” of Durkheim's theory (e.g., Schur, 1967: 111-13). The present comment attempts to analyze the reasons justifying the diffidence expressed by Schwartz and Miller and to show that their findings do not result in a definitive invalidation of Durkheim's thesis.

At the outset, I wish to thank Professor Upendra Baxi for his critical reading of the Schwartz-Miller article. Several years ago, when we first talked, he expressed a lively interest in the issue to which his present comment is directed (Baxi, 1974). His observations, then and now, have helped me to understand some theoretical and methodological complexities in Durkheim's position which I had earlier missed. I acknowledge with gratitude his scholarly observations and also his courteous manner in presenting them.

When Ralph Nader addressed the 35th Annual Meeting of the State Bar of Michigan in September 1970, he said, “Anybody who talks to law students today sees a tremendous difference between their concepts, aspirations, and indignation levels and the law students of yesteryear.” Nader's views on this occasion have been shared by other members of the bench and bar as well as by social and political commentators whose opinions appear regularly in the mass media. They claim that one of the by-products of the social turmoil and the subsequent new politics that emerged at the end of the sixties was a shift by a large proportion of the recent law graduates into careers that involved protection of civil rights and civil liberties, defense of indigents, protection of consumers, and affiliation with inner city citizens' groups that seek basic changes in welfare policies, taxation, housing, and so forth. For a fuller discussion of this issue by members of the legal profession, see Yale Law Journal (1970), McGovagle (1970), and Riley (1970).

The police have taken a suspect into custody and booked him. After the arrest, what next? At first glance, this rather simple question seems to imply an equally simple answer - the arrestee will be formally charged with a crime. Inattention to post-arrest proceedings has reinforced the assumption that judicial proceedings follow an arrest. But being booked in the police station is not the same as being charged in court. Despite the swelling of interest in the police and their use of the arrest power, there has been relatively little interest in or concern with what happens to the suspect after the arrest.

The publication of an inter-disciplinary effort on child welfare law, co-authored by three such luminary figures as Joseph Goldstein (Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law, Science and Social Policy at Yale University Law School), Anna Freud (perhaps the foremost living authority on the emotional lives of children), and Albert Solnit (Director of the Yale University Child Study Center), is an intellectual event. The talents of these authors are such that their book, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973), ought to have significance beyond its reconceptualization of the law of child custody; it ought also to be a landmark in the history of cooperation between social scientists and lawyers. Despite impressive achievements, however, the book's greatest utility may be as an example of the wrong way to employ social science to solve problems of social policy.

Political scientists have in recent years been focusing more of their attention on compliance with Supreme Court decisions. Of course, with rare exceptions, the Supreme Court does not issue orders directly; rather it announces broad policies in the form of opinions. Detailed interpretation and application of these policies are, insofar as the judicial system is concerned at least, left to other courts. Thus those interested in the nature of compliance with Supreme Court policies must explore the manner in which lower courts handle the high court decisions.

One of the ironies of police-community relations is that the high visibility via the mass media of public reaction against police has created the impression that public attitudes are predominantly negative. Evidence from field surveys suggests the opposite—that attitudes are predominantly positive and supportive of police (Gourley, 1954; Cleaver, et al., 1966; Preiss and Ehrlich, 1966; Ennis, 1967; McCaghy, et al., 1968; Bayley and Mendelsohn, 1969; Smith, 1969). In a similar vein, police often view citizens as holding more hostile attitudes toward the police than is in fact the case (McNamara, 1967: 221; Wilson, 1968: 28; Bayley and Mendelsohn, 1969). This shared misunderstanding can have self-fulfilling consequences. Police expect a hostile citizen reception and hence take a more authoritarian attitude in order to assure that actions will be seen as legitimate and authority will not be questioned (Westley, 1953; Skolnick, 1966: 62; Werthman and Piliavin, 1967). The public, expecting the worst from the police, may alter their perceptions so that criticisms of police behavior are more likely. This shared misunderstanding produces more conflict between citizen and police. Instances of police brutality are covered by the media, and the cycle continues.

I am writing in reaction to the article by Spaeth, Meltz, Rathjen and Haselswerdt, “Is Justice Blind: An Empirical Investigation of a Normative Ideal,” which appeared in vol. 7, no. 1. The authors attempt to support the Aristotelian myth that blind justice can systematically obtain. The premise in the myth is fallacious, and confirmation of the authors' research hypothesis in three of their five data sets cannot therefore be an adequate basis for concluding that justice is blind in the cases comprising the three sets.