Criminology, deviance, law -- Making Law: The State, the Law, and Structural Contradictions edited by William J. Chambliss and Marjorie S. Zatz

Making Law: The State, the Law, and Structural Contradictions, edited by William J. Chambliss and Marjorie S. Zatz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. 446 pp. $39.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-253-20834-3. $18.95 paper. ISBN: 0-25-31338-4.

This useful volume for courses in law and society and for students of the relationships between social processes and the law is a collection of essays, some new, some old and well known, which are loosely held together by reference to what is called, throughout the volume, Chambliss's "dialectical" theory of law (p. 9). This is the idea that legal processes and legal solutions reflect and incorporate contradictory needs and demands coming from various sections of society, sometimes involving contradictions between labor and capital, sometimes involving contradictions within the two main classes. Rooted in Marxist tradition, Chambliss's theory claims to be an alternative to pluralist and elitist models of the political and legal process.

As often happens in this kind of collection, the volume relies more on the strength of its...