In a capitalist society the State legal system is in general an instrument of class domination both at the level of the relations of production, as in the factory, and of the relations of reproduction, as in housing. Housing conditions are particularly illustrative of class domination in the squatter settlements of all major cities throughout the capitalist world. Pasargada is the fictitious name of such a settlement in Rio de Janeiro. In a nonrevolutionary situation, and particularly under the yoke of economic and political repression imposed by the fascist State (as in contemporary Brazil), the struggle against housing and living conditions in these settlements is a very hard one. Because of the structural inaccessibility of the State legal system, and especially because of the illegal character of these communities, the dominated classes living in them devise adaptive strategies aimed at securing the minimal social ordering of community relations. One such strategy involves the creation of an internal legality, parallel to (and sometimes conflicting with) State legality—a kind of popular justice. The article describes Pasargada legality from both the inside (through the sociological analysis of legal rhetoric in dispute prevention and dispute settlement) and in its (unequal) relations with the Brazilian official legal system (from the perspective of legal pluralism).

What are the causes of the inefficiency of bankruptcy proceedings and who has to suffer as a result? The authors conducted a nationwide study of insolvencies and the legal procedures to deal with them in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1976. A report on this study was presented in 1977. In the following article the authors use the results of the study as a springboard for some sociolegal reflections on the functioning of law in general and bankruptcy law in particular. They emphasize the three main functions of bankruptcy law in any capitalist society (distribution, conflict resolution, and prevention) and describe social organization of these functions in West German bankruptcy law. Bankruptcy, as revealing a situation of breakdown and crisis, poses problems that are not only practical but also theoretical, problems that can stimulate sociolegal reasoning and help us to understand the social foundations of law.

In recent years there has been an accumulation of analyses showing a negative association between crime rates and various measures of criminal sanctions, which have been widely interpreted as evidence of the deterrent effect of sanctions (see Tullock, 1974; Tittle, 1973; van den Haag, 1975). In this paper, results are presented that are in conflict with such an interpretation. For the sanction of imprisonment (time served in prison and the risk of imprisonment given commission of a crime), the analysis indicates that the negative association is more readily interpreted as a negative effect of crime rates on sanction levels rather than its reverse—a deterrent effect.

When consumers experience problems with purchases the most frequent mechanism for their solution is complaint to the seller. This case study describes and attempts to evaluate the working of the complaint mechanism in handling the problems of purchasers of selected household appliances. The complaint mechanism was found to be commonly used and effective in handling matters defined by consumers as problematic, and consumers often seemed to obtain more generous concessions than the law required of the seller. The latter's response was liberal because management defined generous dealing with customers as consonant with long-run commercial interest, and because staff experienced both official and unofficial pressures to grant customers' requests.

The effect of police practices on the rate of robbery in 35 large American cities is estimated by a set of simultaneous equations. The measures of police resources (patrol units on the street) and police activity on the street (moving citations issued) are more precise than anything thus far available in studies of this kind and permit the use of identification restrictions that allow stronger inferences about the causal effect of arrests on crime rates than has heretofore been possible. Police resources and police activity independently affect the robbery rate after controlling for various socioeconomic factors. The political arrangements that lead to the use of aggressive patrol strategies are discussed and their effect estimated. The implications for, and limitations upon, policy are also discussed.

This is a sociolegal study based on empirical data collected during a two-and-a-half year investigation carried out in ten major Polish industrial establishments. The authors contrast the legal model of industrial social organization with operational reality and emphasize the strong divergence between them. It is suggested that the divergence is due to the fact that the legal structures constructed by bureaucrats in the name of the working class after World War II have not responded to the changes that have occurred within the working class nor to the current structure of power. Because of this divergence, changes in the legal model seem necessary if further escalation of industrial unrest in Poland is to be prevented.

This study investigates the effects of being apprehended for shoplifting. The deviance amplification hypothesis derived from labeling theory and the converse deviance termination hypothesis derived from deterrence theory were formulated to structure the analysis. Self-report data on shoplifting were collected from high school students in four communities. Youth who had been apprehended for shoplifting reported more subsequent shoplifting than unapprehended youth. Youth who were exposed to police contact during apprehension reported more subsequent shoplifting than those who were handled by store personnel alone. In addition, apprehended youth reported a stronger deviant self-concept and less fear of store antishoplifting devices. These patterns were not strong but they were consistently in the direction predicted by labeling theory. Although other explanations may also be useful, it appears that labeling theory explains these findings, at least in part.

This study examines the reactions of thirty complainants to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Complainant class is found to be the single most important explanatory factor; sex and race are not generally important when class is controlled. Higher class correlates with more idealistic motives for filing complaints, greater participation in and higher expectations about the process, better case outcomes, and a more negative evaluation of the Commission. No complainant obtained all the relief sought, but lower class complainants were generally happy with any favorable settlement, while higher class complainants were not. Complainants who seek to vindicate a principle, and therefore are less willing to compromise, find themselves in conflict with the pragmatic approach of most private attorneys (whose own economic interests may also be inconsistent with those of their clients) and with that of the MCAD (which adopts a generally pragmatic stance and prefers to conciliate rather than adjudicate, partly because it is so difficult and time consuming to prove discrimination based on unequal rather than unreasonable treatment). Symbolic and emotional factors determine complainant reactions more than case outcome.

The “drug wave” of the late 1960s was widely perceived as a threat to the legitimacy of normative expectations in Dutch and German society. Although the overwhelming reaction of public opinion to drug users in both countries was hostile and punitive, the German legislature passed even more repressive laws whereas the Dutch legislature adapted the normative system to the use of both “soft” and “hard” drugs. Although in each instance the initiative for legal change came from the political and moral “progressives,” the conservative “moral center” retained a veto power. Why it used this veto power in Germany but actively supported the reform bill in Holland is explained in terms of the macrostructure of each society.