Social life is inevitably conflictual. Conflict occurs as individuals with different interests, goals, problems and perspectives seek to achieve a maximum share of the values which any society provides. Yet, the inevitability of conflict does not mean that its occurrence is welcomed. In fact, generally the opposite is true. Conflict, once it occurs, is difficult to end. Resolution is elusive because conflicts transform themselves almost as quickly as they can be defined and strategies for dealing with them developed. Nevertheless, in every society there is a wide range of techniques and procedures available to deal with disputes.

National debate over the predominance of plea bargaining in the administration of criminal justice in America has become increasingly strident over the past several years. Positions range from the almost unqualified endorsement of plea bargaining practices by no less an authority than the Chief Justice of the United States, through the American Bar Association's (1963) typically moderate proposal for improving procedural safeguards, to the recommendation of total abolition of the practice by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals (1973). Because of a dearth of hard data concerning the effects of plea bargaining on the criminal justice system, debate over the proposals has tended to produce more heat than light. In the trenchant understatement of one surveyer of the subject, “[s]uch recommendations suffer from insufficient empirical grounding and could benefit from further research on plea bargaining” (Mulkey, 1974: 54).

Between the formal law of statute books and appellate courts and the informal law of routine dispositions intervene a variety of actors, exemplified by policemen and insurance adjusters, some of whom have not traditionally been regarded as “legal” actors. However, one of the most important contributions of sociology to the understanding of law has been the demonstration that the attitudes and values of these actors and the pressures embodied in their roles produce a comprehensible divergence between the prescriptions of the formal law and the regularities exhibited in the informal law (Skolnick, 1966; Ross, 1970). This paper discusses some instances of discrepancy between the formal and informal law when formal penalties are suddenly and greatly increased. Its principal hypothesis is that sharp increases in formal penalties tend to be subverted by contrary adjustments in the behavior of those who apply the law. The data to be presented come from four of my studies on the effectiveness of changing traffic laws. As these studies were not designed to test the present hypothesis, their evidence is indirect, and the presentation is exploratory rather than demonstrative.

The relationship between social structure and the development of legal institutions is the central theme in the classic study-by Richard Schwartz, now more than two decades old, “Social Factors in the Development of Legal Control: A Case Study of Two Israeli Settlements” (1954). The article is based on an examination of the systems of control developed in two rural communities, one a kibbutz (or kvutza), based on social and economic collectivism; the other a moshav, a cooperative settlement with private property and social life geared to the nuclear family. Internal controls in both communities were exercised through a General Assembly, composed of all members, and by a number of specialized committees. In contrast to the moshav, which had a Judicial Committee performing an adjudicatory function, Schwartz found that the kibbutz “had no distinctly legal institution” and that its control system “must be considered informal rather than legal” since public opinion constituted its sole sanction (Schwartz, 1954: 471,476).

Professor Allan Shapiro's article, “Law in the Kibbutz: A Reappraisal” raises several questions about my 1954 article, “Social Factors in the Development of Legal Control: A Case Study of Two Israeli Settlements.” I shall formulate the major questions, as I understand them, and suggest the answers as well as I can.

Conflict between individuals and between groups is a normal part of social life. The necessity of coping with disputes and emnity is universal, but societies differ in the ways they deal with conflict. Six basic modes of procedure of conflict management that fall into two major classes can be distinguished: triadic procedures; i.e., those in which the settlement of a dispute depends on the intervention of a third party (adjudication, arbitration, mediation) and dyadic procedures (negotiation, coercion, avoidance.). In the dyadic modes one or both principal parties must necessarily rely on self-help in processing a dispute, though possibly with the help of partisan supporters or representatives. Avoidance occurs when one principal withdraws from the conflict situation [“exit” in Hirschman's (1970) terminology]. By coercion, the threat or use of force, one principal imposes the outcome of a dispute and alone determines his concesssion, if any, to the opponent. Negotiation, once initiated by one of the principals, requires the cooperation of both parties and, if successful, leads to the settlement of a dispute by bilateral agreement.

Motorcycles are involved in fatal crashes far in excess of their share of motor vehicle mileage or registrations. Although their annual mileage per vehicle is less than half that of cars (Federal Highway Administration, 1974), and they were only 3.7 percent of registered motor vehicles in the U.S. in 1974, their riders accounted for 6.8 percent of motor vehicle fatalities (National Safety Council, 1975). A study of vehicle sizes in fatal crashes found that motorcycles killed pedestrians at about the same rate per registered motorcycle as small cars per registered small car (Robertson and Baker, in press). (The pedestrian rates were higher per registered vehicle among larger cars and trucks.) A survey of traumatic spinal cord injuries in 18 Northern California counties found that 9 percent of motor vehicle related spinal cord trauma occurred to motorcyclists (Kraus, et al., 1975). In one California county where an attempt was made to find all medically treated motorcyclist injuries, one of every 24 registered motorcycles per year was involved in a crash that resulted in such injuries (Kraus et al., 1975).