Isn't it evident how different justice systems in different parts of the world operate and how the system is not always fair? While this may be evident to the naked eye, is there a possible explanation that has been institutionally presented?
Chambliss and Seidman examined how the dispute and unanimity perspectives offer widely divergent explanations of criminal justice's operation. They refer to the state's authority as having "a value-neutral framework." This allows for the peaceful resolution of conflict. "The higher the group's financial and political position, the greater the likelihood that its ideas will be mirrored in the legislation," claims Chambliss and Seidman. The following statements from the authors serve to summarize their theory
The organizations that makeup law enforcement are bureaucratic. An institution and its members frequently supplant their own internal rules and practices for the organization's declared aims and norms to maximize rewards and reduce organizational stress. The following factors enable the goal substitution
The inability of role-holders to muster the resolve to fend off demands approaching goal replacement.
The extent to which the existing criminal law permits discretionary decision-making and the standards outlining the duties of those working for the enforcement agencies.
The lack of meaningful penalties for breaking the rules governing the responsibilities in those agencies.
Political entities are a funding source for criminal justice. Processing individuals who are politically impotent and weak while forgoing those with a prominent political role will optimize benefits and minimize difficulties for the institution. As a result, it is reasonable to assume that law enforcement agencies will focus their attention on the infractions of the politically vulnerable and powerless while ignoring those of the powerful.
William Chambliss presented his view that criminality is a component of economics and politics, democratic power dispute, and bureaucracy in 1976. This is the first element that will be considered. The terms "social status" and "systemic racism" are mentioned in his comments on social dynamics. Conflicts between social classes are merely a result of their existence. The only reason laws and regulations are passed so that the government can keep things in check and fend off threats
Criminals consequently belong to the class of people who lack authority, and it is this class that decides whether or not to label them as criminals. The groundbreaking publication "Law, Order and Power" by Chambliss and Seidman was significant for two things: its interaction with the literature of judicial anthropology and adjudication, and the formulation, in the revised season, of a "dialectical" theory of law. They promoted a state-centered interpretation of the law with a clear allegiance to legal positivism and American legal pragmatism. In cultures with centralized states, legislation was a corpus of standards that stood out from other standards because it was created and imposed by the state
In one sense, there is disagreement with Chambliss and Seidman because they support legal pluralism. However, we accord with them as they claim that there is no one exact characterization of law and that the optimal way to define the notion of law relies on the job at hand. In their opinion, the term "law" should only be used to refer to laws established, decided upon, and implemented by the state for a critique of sociological law. For this decision, they offered two somewhat disparate explanations. One was that legislation (containing executive decision) was, in their opinion, the most important aspect of their study since it was "policy-oriented" and intended to "assist in overcoming rising societal challenges."
The secondary factor was that they sought to dispel some common misconceptions about law, including the notions that it mirrored a simple ethical consensus within society, that the "law in the books" matched approved conduct, and that there was little room for discretion due to the professional nature of legal rationality. It was required to combine a skeptical knowledge of legal principles—drawing from positivist and realist jurisprudence—with an actual analysis of the operation of state power to dispel these fallacies. The form of legislation to which the misconceptions applied and their aim was pertinent was state-enacted, state-enforced law. Law of this type was thus ancillary to Chambliss and Seidman's objective since small, homogeneous, sovereign communities possessed dispute-settlement mechanisms that could be termed "law." However, they did not use it as a deliberate tool of social change or share the same legal mythology as contemporary nations.
They contend that police in the USA routinely violate due process requirements. However, more is needed to effectively rein them in because of the scope of selective enforcement, the lack of probability that official injunctions will be used, and the need for more internalization of the pertinent standards by the police subculture.
It is recognized that it is pointless to look for the "heart" of law—a singular explanation appropriate for all circumstances—as do Chambliss and Seidman. The ideal way to think of law is as a notion with "family resemblances" that encompasses a variety of occurrences rather than just one thing that makes it unique. Law comprises all phenomena commonly referred to as "law" that encompasses customary law, international law, and Islamic rule but excludes the law of aggregates and the jungle's legal system. It also covers occurrences to which the term "law" is not typically applied but shares so many characteristics with cases of law that are generally acknowledged that doing so aids in providing a "perspicuous depiction" of those phenomena.
However, as they could see, there is no purpose in having a definition of "law" that encompasses every type of societal norm; we might as well talk about social norms instead of law. It is important to recognize that there is no clear conceptual line between norms or practices that considerably resemble unquestionably legal guidelines or procedures versus those that do not.
They described a "dialectical" method for studying the sociology of legislation in the second edition. Later, this was refined and altered to incorporate a passage from Chambliss' speech on state-sponsored crime. It is crucial to consider what is intended by a "dialectical" approach at this time. A crucial aspect of a discursive view is the attachment of comprehensive significance to oppositions. A paradox occurs when two arguments are conceptually contradictory, particularly when normative assertions regarding what an individual should do are concerned. In other words, a conflict existed between Sir Francis Drake's commands to perform espionage crimes and the legislation that forbade them under the death penalty to use one of Chambliss' historical instances of state-funded crime. Due to their reflection on "structural contradictions" of the essential variety articulated by Marx, Chambliss claimed that "contradictory beliefs and aspirations constitute the very core of state constructions."
When analyzing the criminal justice system, while it is pretty evident that a magnitude of fallacies exists, it is also oblivious to ignore the fair side of it. The comprehensive analysis presented by Chambliss and Seidman presents an understanding like no other.