One of the reasons why social behavior is so much harder to understand than other phenomena is that it has meaning, both for the actor and for the observer. This is particularly true of law, which is preeminently an expression of values. A central question in the social theory of law has therefore been: what is the normative meaning of law for social actors? The answer to that question is often influenced by the values which the theorist attributes to the law. Isaac Balbus, in his article in this issue, denominates two extreme responses as instrumental pluralism and instrumental marxism. The first perceives law under western liberal capitalism as an ideal harmonization of the values of all citizens. The second sees that law as pure exploitation, an instrument of naked ruling class domination. All of the writers in this issue reject both extremes. The relationship—between the values of social actor or analytic observer, and legal reality—is far more complex. That complexity is often expressed as the “relative” autonomy of law, although the phrase may be more elliptical than illuminating. The recognition that law is related to, but also partly autonomous from, both economic infrastructure and normative superstructure, is obviously the beginning of analysis, not the end. Perhaps the most important contribution of the articles that follow is their determination to study those relationships empirically, rather than deducing them from ideological presuppositions, as has so often been done in the past.

The convergence of the articles in this issue is the happy product of independent research upon two problems of widespread concern. Warren and Hiday examine civil commitment of the mentally ill in very different jurisdictions: urban California and rural North Carolina. Yet as Monahan suggests, in his synthetic overview, their data and analysis tend to point in similar directions. Steele surveys the literature on dispute processes and indicates how Hannigan, on the one hand, and Best and Andreasen, on the other, pursue complementary approaches to the study of consumer grievances and remedies. The present format has two advantages: the individual scholar retains the choice of topic and method, but research is still cumulative. I hope to encounter like conjunctions in the future.

Civil commitment recently has come to replace the insanity defense as the most controversial issue in mental health law. While the resident population of state mental hospitals has plummeted in the past decade, cries that commitment be abolished altogether are heard with no decrease in fervor. Many others feel that the pendulum has swung too far, that patients' rights and community care have been seized upon by fiscally conservative legislatures to cease providing any care at all to mentally disordered persons.

Models of the jury selection process in a Federal District Court are developed from court records, legal standards, and other information and then compared to determine sources of bias. The jury selection plan developed by the court has been operationally reformulated using 1970 census data to identify bias resulting from even a fair application of the plan. This normative model is also used to test for biases in the procedures and the results of the 1970 plan implementation in Eastern Massachusetts based on voter registration lists. Findings support the hypothesis that the juror selection process effectively discriminates against the poor, the young, racial minorities, women, and persons with low and high educational attainment. Sources of bias are found in the use of outdated voter registration lists, unreturned jury qualification questionnaires, and the excuse process. Recommendations are given for ways to reduce the extent of this bias.

This paper argues that American legal culture, specifically the complex of public attitudes toward our major legal institutions and values, is truly democratic. The most persistent, although often unexplained, theme in that complex of attitudes is the demand for equal treatment. Americans endorse the ideals of equal treatment and believe that the most glaring defect of the present legal system is its failure to provide such treatment. Yet, as de Tocqueville noted, our ideas of equality are often incomplete; the demand for equal treatment appears to be a demand for equality between oneself and those now accorded preferential treatment rather than a demand that those less favored be treated as well as oneself. Evidence in support of the argument is gathered from survey studies of public attitudes toward the police, lawyers, and courts as well as of their attitudes toward crime, punishment, and civil liberties.

An organizational approach to the study of dispositions in United States District Courts is outlined, focusing on the pressures created by the combination of an increasing demand for service together with a relative decline in resources. The functions of courts are identified as adjudication, judicial administration, and policymaking. After stating some of the general theoretical issues involved in the approach taken here, courts are described in terms of the following organizational characteristics: (1) they are networks of organized activities with a mixed collegial and bureaucratic authority structure, as well as informal political processes of coordination, (2) heteronomous, (3) a labor-intensive professional service, (4) a branch of government, (5) nonspecialized, (6) passive, (7) vertically and horizontally interrelated with other organizations, (8) whose tasks are influenced by the demographic, economic, and legalgovernmental characteristics of the jurisdictional environment

Theoretically, the output of courts (e.g., the volume and nature of dispositions) is seen as determined by the environmental profile and the complexity of the task structure, with fiscal resources and organizational structure as intervening variables. These major organizational dimensions and variables are illustrated with data on the six District Courts of the Second Circuit.

A preliminary statistical analysis presents the effects of the jurisdictional environment on various types of filings in all United States District Courts in 1950, 1960, and 1973. The results confirm one aspect of the historically increasing involvement of government in the economy and society, namely, that which is mediated by the federal courts. The increasing governmental presence is shown in civil litigation involving the United States government as defendant and plaintiff, as well as in the contextual effects on filings of governmental agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.

The paper concludes with a brief discussion of three types of responses to the current crisis of the judiciary: the judicial response, emanating from the law-finding and adjudicatory role of courts; the bureaucratic response, reflecting the progressive transformation of adjudication into administration; and the technocratic response, emerging as a synthesis of adjudication and administration and stressing the policy-making function of courts within the context of the modern American politieal economy.

The mobilization of law may be thought of as the process by which legal norms are invoked to regulate behavior. In the area of private law, mobilization has two distinct aspects. The first is the process by which existing disputes become engaged in the legal system. In theory this means that disputes are transferred from an arena where their resolution and the enforcement of resolutions depends on the relative power of the parties as enhanced or constrained by nongovernmental normative systems to an arena where disputes are resolved by reference to governmental (legal) norms and resolutions are enforced by the power of the state. In practice the separation between the governmental and nongovernmental spheres is rarely complete. Legal norms may influence the way in which parties resolve their disputes even when there is no threat that the matter will be taken to law, and both the parties' resources (Galanter, 1974, 1976) and nongovernmental norms“ clearly affect the way disputes are resolved in the legal system.

Prior to January 1974, jury selection procedures violating basic standards of randomness had resulted in juries in Erie County, New York, which were overwhelmingly male. This paper describes the biased selection procedures, their discovery by volunteers engaged in a project to ensure a fair trial for prison inmates under indictment for events occurring in the Attica uprising, and the consequences of both improved procedures and an amended law for sexual equality in jury selection.

Two linkages between law and society are explored. First, the existence of a “woman's exemption” had led the jury commissioner and staff to make systematic prejudgments about women's behavior which then resulted in their underrepresentation on juries. Second, lawyers and social scientists worked together, using procedures and concepts from both disciplines to achieve a goal of mutual interest: improvement of the methods of jury selection, so that jury composition would more closely resemble the composition of the community. Possibilities and problems of social scientists working with lawyers are described briefly.

One hundred persons who were committed involuntarily to mental hospitals on 72-hour holds under California's Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (1967), and who filed writs of habeas corpus, were observed during petition hearings. Involuntary commitment criteria were frequently “bargained down” from dangerous to others, dangerous to self, and gravely disabled during the 72-hour hold to gravely disabled at the petition hearing. Most frequently used criteria for continued hospitalization as gravely disabled included prior hospitalization, refusal to take medication, and failure to cooperate with the hospital system. Persons adjudged dangeros to self were generally suicidal in action or talk. Although a minority of persons judged at the petition hearing to be dangerous to others were assaultive or threatening, evidence for the imminence and seriousness of dangerousness was not offered.

Several courts of limited jurisdiction currently exist in the federal judicial system, and new specialized courts have been proposed. Opponents of some specialized courts have pointed to the potential policy implications of judicial specialization, and their arguments merit attention. In this article the effects of specialization on the influence of litigant groups over judicial decisions and on the substance of judicial policy are analyzed in general terms. These effects are then examined in greater depth through a case study of the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. The findings are complex, but they indicate that specialization may have a significant impact on judicial behavior. This impact should be taken into account in decisions whether to create courts of limited jurisdiction.

Some aspects of the effects of the legal regulation in the socialist economy are discussed on the basis of interviews with two samples of managers of state enterprises in Poland. Emphasis is on the mode of adaptation by the managers to what they perceive as conflicting economic, legal, and administrative demands—especially in interactions between the enterprises. An attempt is made to specify the role played by the norm and mechanism of reciprocity, as well as by the other mutual sanctions that order economic cooperation, beyond the official legal regulations.

This paper reviews existing empirical studies, finding that most have adopted an explicit or implicit model of legal need which is based solely on past use patterns. There is an absence of linkage between problem solving styles, uniqueness of problems, community networks of support, and concepts of social justice. The central problem confronting groups is how to convert their interests into some semblance of property interests or expectation. This invites legal change. Much of the past preoccupation with the problem of need conceals an absence of attention to crucial variables about quality of legal service, lawyer outlook and socialization, and the dynamics of the lawyer-client relationship. Lawyer perception may be as important, if not more important than client perception in determining the nature and scope of legal service. The author suggests, therefore, that any functional definition of legal need has to include a structural view of the legal profession.