Law and Social Change

1
Law and Social Change

• Sociology 641

2
Pluralist vs. Critical Perspectives

• Pluralist Perspective Law reflects bargaining
  among a wide range of groups and is not
  inherently linked to any particular faction in
  society
• Plural interests
• Cross-cutting allegiances
• Shifting coalitions
• Law is a contested tool
• Critical Perspective Law is fundamentally
  biased toward a single ruling class.
• Concentrated power
• Coherent ruling class
• Pervasive and persistent divisions
• Law is a reflection of ruling class interests
• Apparent pluralism as relative autonomy

3
Friedman, Lawrence and Jack Ladinsky (1967),
"Social Change and the Law of Industrial
Accidents," Columbia Law Review, 6750-82.

• Historically Torts of negligence
• Respondeat Superior
• Industrial revolution Exceptions for employees
• Contributory negligence
• Fellow-servant rule
• Assumption of risk
• Turn of (20th) Century
• Crisis
• ? Workers Compensation

4
Explanations of Workers Comp

• Pluralist bargaining, coalition-building,
  compromise
• a series of brief, ad hoc, and unstable
  compromises between the clashing interests of
  labor and management...
• Workers Compensation replaced a highly
  unsatisfactory system with a rational, actuarial
  one.
• Critical class conflict, law in the interest of
  capital
• Exceptions to respondeat superior promote
  capitalism
• Instrumental inequity undermines legitimacy
• Workers Comp is both predictable and protective
• Why not just let respondeat superior cover
  employees???

5
Pluralist vs. Critical perspectives

• Dispersed power vs. concentrated power
• But both agree on the relationship between social
  change and legal change
• Social change drives legal change
• Law as DV Social Pressure ? Law

6
Law and Social Change
(the transparent model)
Society
Legal System
Social Pressure
Legal Change
Social Change
7
Law and Social Change
(the institutionalist model)
Society
Legal System
Social Pressure
Legal Change
Social Change
8
An Institutionalist perspective

• E.g.,...
• Structuralist models of law and stratification
• Relative autonomy theories of law and ideology
• Institutional filters ? Law as independent
  variable