Law as a Weapon in Social Conflict

Explicit or implicit in most research on law and society is the “moral functionalist” conception of law as essentially a means for settling or precluding disputes. The major limitations of this conception are that it (1) introduces cultural bias into research by defining away the disruptive and exploitive aspects of law, (2) tends to equate legal with consensual methods or processes of conflict management, which are presumed to be more effective than coercive ones, and (3) encourages research in which natural law and/or functional-systems assumptions are taken for granted. A superior alternative is the conception of law as power, i.e. a set of resources whose control and mobilization can in many ways – as indicated in a series of propositional statements – generate and exacerbate conflicts rather than resolving or softening them.