THE LAW AND SOCIETY READER by Richard L. Abel (editor). New York: New York University Press, 1995. 450 pp. Cloth $55.00.
Paper $20.00.Reviewed by Samuel Krislov, Department of Political Science, University of MinnesotaWhen the Law and Society Association was in its infancy, the trustees would meet in someone''s hotel room at someone else''s convention. I went to economics, psychology, sociology and anthropology meetings that way. Our perennial subjects at our cuckoo''s nest deliberations were raising money and keeping the Law & Society Review going. We had perpetual differences with our amiable publisher, a clash of two cultures. Ultimately, the publishers proposed taking over the review guaranteeing very generous terms. They apparently thought they had made an offer no sensible individual would refuse. But to a person the trustees agreed that the review was our primary responsibility, that financial risk was unimportant, that the review was the road to any viable organizational future. And so it proved to be.When I was asked to review Abel s Law and Society reader, I assumed I would be taking a walk through memory lane, reliving some of those early years and the evolution of The Review since then. Alas, that is not to be, for the reader is a different kind of volume. There are, of course, myriad strategies of selection from thirty years of a rich and variegated journal. Abel''s strategy has not been to select landmark
articles for their own sake, but rather to assemble a highly useful and surprisingly well integrated classroom volume developing a small set of themes through generous abridgment of eighteen articles culled from the review. An introduction and discussion questions are added as apparatus to help integrate the volume. The themes chosen by Abel are:1. "Disputing" with four articles
dealing with the nature of disputes, perceptions by participants, and the macro uses of law;2. "Social Control" with another four pieces on punishment and control mechanisms;3. "Norm Creation" with one piece on criminal and another dealing with civil processes;4. "Regulation" with pieces on organizational buttressing of court decisions;5. "Equality" including race and gender considerations and Marc Galanter s "Why the Haves Came Out Ahead," probably the most celebrated piece in Review history;6. "Ideas and Consciousness;"7. "The legal profession."The topics and the selections reflect rather personal approaches. The editing is generous and largely catholic in taste and done in collaboration with, and the permission of the primary authors so that the selections convey the originals extremely well. However, Abel clearly preferred articles featuring on the one hand individual level anthropological and psychological foci and on Page 229 follows: