ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a general description of the conflict model of society and examines the notions of competition and dissensus and their role in the legal sphere. Viewing conflict as a normal part of the social order, Georg Simmel regards legal relations within the context of superordination-subordination interactions as being reciprocal, not just oppressive. The chapter shows how Jerome Hall, William J. Chambliss, Joseph R. Gusfield, and Troy Duster have employed conflict theory in explaining the historical evolution of the laws on theft, vagrancy, alcohol consumption, and narcotic drug addiction. In his influential book Theft, Law, and Society, legal scholar Hall shows how a judicial decision rendered in the Carrier’s Case in 1473 reflected the social conflicts that emerged from the changing political and economic conditions of Renaissance England. Chambliss explains that the Black Death, the bubonic plague epidemic in Europe during the fourteenth century, was the primary factor responsible for propelling the enactment of the vagrancy statutes in England.
