Donald Black's Positivism in Law and Social Control

Abstract

Donald Black's third major book, the collection of essays titled The Social Structure of Right and Wrong, follows methodically from his The Behavior of Law and Sociological Justice.1 A body of interrelated work is rare among theorists today and compelling in itself. It already distinguishes Black's contribution from that of contemporary theorists who too often move from issue to issue. More than this, Black has developed his major theoretical works with such rigor at a conceptual level that, in my view, they merit comparison to the major works of Parsons, Luhmann, Habermas, and then to those of the classics. I find the three works cited above, for instance, to be more than worthy successors to Durkheim's Division of Labor (1893) and Suicide (1897).2 They are driven, actually, by an aspiration that is grander than that driving Durkheim's two works, and Black more fully realizes his aspiration. Durkheim explored how individuals' degree of interdependence-organic solidarity-affects their behavior, and he endeavored to predict and explain the suicide rate both in comparative and historical perspective. He also sug-