In this paper disputes are seen as varying along a dimension of admitted liability, that is, the extent to which defendants admit some obligation to plaintiffs; they may admit no liability, partial liability, or full liability. This conceptualization was used in an empirical study of a small claims court. The results paint a portrait of the court that is at variance with most of the previous literature. Consumer issues constitute a substantial portion of the court caseload. On average, defendants, including individual consumers, do well when they dispute claims. Among disputed cases, small rather than large businesses predominate. Prior literature has suggested that, in comparison to adjudication, mediation of claims produces compromise outcomes and higher rates of compliance. This research shows that mediation yields a large percentage of all-or-none results, but to the extent that there is compromise and compliance, it can be partly ascribed to admitted liability characteristics. Some data on defaulted cases are also presented.

In “Sander County” Illinois, concerns about litigiousness in the local population tended to focus on personal injury suits, although such cases were very rarely brought. This article explores the roots of these concerns in the ideology of the rural community and in the reactions of many residents to social, cultural, and economic changes that created a pervasive sense of social disintegration and loss. Personal injury claims are contrasted with contract actions, which were far more numerous yet were generally viewed with approval and did not give rise to perceptions of litigiousness or greed. The distinction is explained in terms of changing conceptions of the community itself and in terms of the problematic relationships between “insiders” and “outsiders” in Sander County.

Illegal behavior responding to subjective probabilities of arrest and consequent costs is modeled within a framework of individual choice under uncertainty. The model is formulated for the case of driving while intoxicated and tested with data that include all arrests for drunken driving in Sweden from 1976-1979. Results indicate that an arrest experience reduces the probability that a person will drive while drunk. The results suggest that an arrest increases a person's perceived probability of arrest and/or the unpleasantness of an arrest and thus leads to a reduced chance of acting illegally.

In 1982, a set of strict new countermeasures against drinking-driving went into effect in California. Interrupted time series analysis is used to investigate the effect that these countermeasures have had on fatal accident levels during the first postintervention year. The results do not indicate that a deterrent impact occurred among those accidents. Supplementary analyses of injury accidents during the first postintervention year and of fatality accidents during the first nine months of 1983 add important qualifications to this basic finding.

Involuntary commitment to mental hospitals has been a topic of scholarly interest for the last twenty years. That interest has resulted in dozens of studies which have informed the legal reform of many state commitment statutes. In this paper we analyze the organizational context in which the decision to commit takes place. Relying on observations of the commitment process in an urban setting, we discuss the negotiating among the actors involved in the decision to commit. Our data suggest that formal disposition to involuntarily commit accounts for only a small percentage of those held at the hospital against their will. Court procedures and professional persuasion are used to coerce citizens into “voluntary” stays at the hospital in order to avoid court proceedings. We conclude with some thoughts about the meaning of commitment rates in light of these findings.