ABSTRACT
The effort to develop an adequate conception of law must begin by recognizing the centrality of diversity and conflict in social life wherever law—provisionally understood as the process of formally articulating normative expectations—is discernible. As law becomes available, it becomes relevant as a contingency which must be met. It then becomes necessary to act so as to gain or increase control of legal resources, if only to neutralize them as weaponry an opponent might employ. Legal concepts and thought-ways develop in the course of pragmatic efforts by men to comprehend problems of social interaction so as to manage them—including the problematics of dominating the lives of other people. People’s life chances are affected just as decisively by how much their economic power is enhanced or eroded by law. Legal decisions may prematurely signal the end of conflicts without actually resolving them.
