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The author shall comment here on the theoretical framework sociologist J.H. Skolnick suggests for studies in the sociology of law and the adequacy of the bibliography in his Social Problems article "The Sociology of Law in America: Overview and Trends." While Skolnick's emphasis on theory and the "larger philosophical issues," is welcome, his theoretical orientation would unnecessarily constrict social studies of law. One is indebted to Skolnick for undertaking the difficult task of charting the sociological course. Understandably, any map drawn by a single individual will most clearly reveal the particular road taken by him. The purpose here is to share perspectives, and the comments of the author on Skolnick's paper will contribute to this objective. Skolnick tells that "the most important work for the sociologist of law is the development of theory growing out of empirical, especially institutional, studies" and that the "most general contribution that the sociology of law may make to social theory is that of understanding the relation between law and social organization."

The interplay between professionals and clients has been examined in a number of settings and the impact of laymen on professional behavior is well-known to the sociologists. In this research report these insights are applied to police-citizen interaction in an effort to explain the dynamics of discretionary decisions by police officers and the role such discretion plays in their quest to attain higher professional stature. Specific attention will be paid to variations in the willingness of policemen to develop and utilize informers or "stool pigeons." This article examines information secured in tape-recorded personal interviews conducted during the winter of 1971 by the author in two European police departments. Discretionary decisions to arrest or not, or to press serious or minor charges, become one part of the negotiation between policemen and citizens, making it possible for the police to carve out a work style balancing professional rules and codes while also making sufficient concessions to client controls necessary to operate in the streets.

This article is a reply to the article "Comment--Durkeim and Legal Evolution: Some Problems of Disproof," by Upendra Baxi. It focuses on French sociologist Émile Durkheim's hypothesis on legal evolution. According to the author, several questions have been raised concerning the conceptual and operational meaning of Durkheim's "Division of Labor" hypothesis and there is an increasing requirement to adopt a new index for repressive sanctions that may meet the criticism of Durkheim. Secondly, Durkheim did not state the hypothesis in clearly testable form. Ambiguities are to be found particularly between the concepts and their operational specification. While there has been a sustained implication, throughout the hypothesis, that restiutive sanctions could occur in very unspecialized societies, operationally this exercise of such sanctions seems to be limited to specialized organs such as consular tribunals, councils of arbitration and administrative tribunals of every sort. Further, even in the most general part, pertaining to the civil law, it is exercised only through particular functionaries like magistrates and lawyers, who have become apt in this role because of very special training.

The article discusses sociological research. One must certainly be indebted to sociologist C.A. Auerbach for having broadened their horizons with the addition of numerous citations. The author would like to reassure him that they were not excluded because, as he suggests, he might have "thought none of them had any value for the kind of theory ... the sociologist of law ought to elaborate." Many of them are doubtless "relevant" but, as the author pointed out early in the article, he omitted all manner of "relevant" literature. He did not regard it as my responsibility to develop a comprehensive bibliography of "relevant" material, but rather to indicate some of the central theoretical concerns and research interests of the developing field of the sociology of law. Regarding these, sociologist Auerbach makes fundamental criticisms. He can "think of no more fruitless task" than his conclusion that sociologists of law ought to explore "the nature of legality . . and the conditions under which it is likely to emerge."

This article sketches briefly a picture of the major current programs which have developed under the aegis of the Russell Sage Foundation. These impressions are based on a review of grant applications and annual reports on file with the Russell Sage Foundation, on the author's own experiences working at Berkeley and at Denver and on visits by his New York University colleagues to the Sage-sponsored centers at Wisconsin and Northwestern. The decision of the Russell Sage Foundation in 1959 to support formal centers of interdisciplinary cooperation between law and social science with the expenditure of over a million dollars by 1963, has substantially formed the institutional structure of the law and social science movement. The latter-day followers of the legal realist tradition in the law schools, for example and large numbers of sociologists working in the specialty of criminology, were very much aware of the "opposite" disciplines. The Sage program, however, has been responsible for transforming much of this interest into familiarity and knowledge.