Law and Society

Jurisprudence and Subculture in
Conflict and Accommodation

Publisher’s Preface

Law and Society contains a penetrating collection of analyses on law, jurisprudence and subculture by one of the preeminent social scientists of the 20th century, Dr. Stanford M. Lyman.

It is the first time the published writings of Dr. Lyman on the topic of law and society – spanning more than 40 years – have been brought together in one convenient volume. Collectively, they clearly show how sociological factors, such as conflict, accommodation, and mediation, affect legal processes and outcomes in both American society as a whole and subcultures within the general society.

Law and Society is divided into two broad sections. In the first section, the focus is on general American society, including analyses of the thought and legacy of Roscoe Pound, Herbert Blumer, and Seymour Martin Lipset, among other influential thinkers, and diverse issues ranging in substance and complexity from school segregation to Japanese internment to Watergate to affirmative action.

In the second section, Dr. Lyman directs his attention to analyses of power, struggle, and conflict resolution within two Asian subcultures, the Japanese and Chinese, especially the “Chinatowns” throughout the United States.

Overall, the topics analyzed in Law and Society include jurisprudence and juridical cultures; legitimacy and consensus; equality before the law; sociology and the law; Chinatown as a subculture built on conflict; power, conflict and community among Japanese and Chinese immigrants to America; clans, secret societies, and other institutions for judicial settlement; mediation, conciliation, and conflict resolution; and group cohesion and community power.

The ideas, insights, and conceptualizations presented by Dr. Lyman in this rich collection of articles both define and illustrate how social scientists think about the intersection of law and society, with important implications for the disciplines of sociology, economics, political science, education, geography, anthropology, and social psychology.