Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T07:07:35.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rational Law and Boundary Maintenance: Legitimating the 1971 Lockheed Loan Guarantee

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Gerald Turkel
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Neo-Marxian critiques of Max Weber's theory of rationality have stressed the ideological role of legal formalism. At the analytic level, however, Weber's theory points to sources of potential conflict between legal formalism and economic rationality. This paper critically reconstructs Weber's perspective for analyzing the boundary maintaining categories of legal discourse. A case study of the 1971 federal loan guarantee to Lockheed Aircraft Corporation demonstrates that while both market ideologies and administrative principles partially bounded the debate over the legislation, this debate did not resolve the question of which businesses should potentially receive government support. This substantive issue raised problems of legal particularism that undermined the universal claims of legal rationality and required an expansion of boundary categories beyond legal formalism, yielding a more economically and politically open discourse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , 1981 , pp. 41 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Robert Miller for his sustained help in researching the legislative debate over the Lockheed loan guarantee. Margaret Andersen, Alan Block, William Chambliss, Kenneth Eckhardt, David Ermann, Thomas Priest, and Paul Robertshaw provided valuable comments on earlier drafts of this essay. I am especially grateful for the critical comments and suggestions of anonymous Law & Society Review referees. A version of this paper was presented at the 1980 meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society held in Boston.

References

ALBROW, Martin (1975) “Legal Positivism and Bourgeois Materialism: Max Weber's View of the Sociology of Law,” 2 British Journal of Law and Society 14.Google Scholar
BALBUS, Isaac D. (1977) “Commodity Form and Legal Form: An Essay on the ‘Relative Autonomy’ of the Law,” 11 Law & Society Review 571.Google Scholar
BEIRNE, Piers (1979) “Ideology and Rationality in Max Weber's Sociology of Law,” 2 Research in Law and Sociology 103.Google Scholar
CHAMBUSS, William J. (1979) “On Law Making,” 6 British Journal of Law and Society 149.Google Scholar
DOMHOFF, G. William (1971) The Higher Circles: The Governing Class in America. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
DOMHOFF, G. William (1975) “New Directions in Power Structure Research,” The Insurgent Sociologist.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DOMHOFF, G. William (1979) The Powers That Be: Processes of Ruling Class Domination in America. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
FRASER, Andrew (1978) “The Legal Theory We Need Now,” 8 Socialist Review 147.Google Scholar
GABEL, Peter (1977) “Intention and Structure in Contractual Conditions: Outline of a Method for Critical Legal Theory,” 61 Minnesota Law Review 601.Google Scholar
GARFINKEL, Harold (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
GALBRAITH, John Kenneth (1973) “Military Power and the Military Budget,” in Haveman, R. H. and Hamrin, R. D. (eds.), The Political Economy of Federal Policy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
GIDDENS, Anthony (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, tructure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Berkeley: niversity of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GOLD, David, LO, C. Y., and E. O., WRIGHT (1975) “Recent Developments in Marxist Theories of the Capitalist State, Parts I and II,” 27 Monthly Review 29.Google Scholar
GRAMSCI, Antonio (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
HABERMAS, Jürgen (1970) Toward a Rational Society. Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
HABERMAS, Jürgen (1975) Legitimation Crisis. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Hearings Before the Committee on Banking and Currency, U.S. House of Representatives, 92nd Congress, July 13-20, 1971. U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
HORWITZ, Morton J. (1977) The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
KENNEDY, Duncan (1973) “Legal Formality,” 2 Journal of Legal Studies 351.Google Scholar
KENNEDY, Duncan (1976) “Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication,” 89 Harvard Law Review 1685.Google Scholar
KLARE, Karl (1978) “Judicial Deradicalization of the Wagner Act and the Origins of Modern Legal Consciousness, 1937-1941,” 62 Minnesota Law Review 265.Google Scholar
KLARE, Karl (1979) “Law Making as Praxis,” 40 Telos 123.Google Scholar
KOTZ, David M. (1978) Bank Control of Large Corporations in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press. “Lockheed: Can It Make a Commercial Comeback?” 100 Forbes 28 (Oct. 1, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LUKACS, Georg (1971) History and Class Consciousness. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. London: Merlin Press.Google Scholar
MACAULAY, Stewart (1966) Law and the Balance of Power: The Automobile Manufacturers and their Dealers. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
MARCUSE, Herbert (1968) Negations. Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
MELMAN, Seymour (1974) The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
MELMAN, Seymour (1973) “The Pervasive Economic Impact of the Military”, in Haveman, R. H. and Hamrin, R. D. (eds.), The Political Economy of Federal Policy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
NEDELMANN, Birgitta and Kurt G., MEIER (1979) “Theories of Contemporary Corporatism: Static or Dynamic?,” in Schmitter, Phillipe C. and Lehmbruch, Gerhard (eds.), Trends toward Corporatist Intermediation. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
O'CONNOR, James (1973) The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin's.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
OFFE, Claus (1972) “Political Authority and Class Structures: An Analysis of Late Capitalist Societies,” 2 International Journal of Sociology 73.Google Scholar
PARSONS, Talcott (1971) “Value-Freedom and Objectivity,” in Max Weber and Sociology Today. Edited by Otto Stammer and translated by Kathleen Morris. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
SAMPSON, Anthony (1977) The Arms Bazaar: From Lebanon to Lockheed. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
SCHERER, Frederick M. (1973) “The Problem of Cost Overruns,” in Haveman, R. H. and Hamrin, R. D. (eds.), The Political Economy of Federal Policy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
SCHROYER, Trent (1973) The Critique of Domination: The Origins and Development of Critical Theory. New York: George Braziller.Google Scholar
SUMNER, Colin (1979) Reading Ideologies: An Investigation into the Marxist Theory of Ideology and Law. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
SWIDLER, Ann (1973) “The Concept of Rationality in the Work of Max Weber,” 43 Sociological Inquiry 35.Google Scholar
TRUBEK, David M. (1972) “Max Weber on Law and the Rise of Capitalism,” 1972 Wisconsin Law Review 720.Google Scholar
TRUBEK, David M. (1977) “Complexity and Contradiction in the Legal Order: Balbus and the Challenge of Critical Social Thought About Law,” 11 Law & Society Review 529.Google Scholar
TURKEL, Gerald (1979) “Testing Durkheim: Some Theoretical Considerations,” 13 Law and Society Review 721.Google Scholar
TURKEL, Gerald (1980) “Legitimation, Authority, and Consensus Formation,” 8 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 19.Google Scholar
TUSHNET, Mark V. (1977) “Perspectives on the Development of American Law: A Critical Review of Friedman's ‘A History of American Law,‘” 1977 Wisconsin Law Review 81.Google Scholar
UNGER, Roberto M. (1976) Law in Modern Society: Toward a Criticism of Social Theory. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
U. S. CONGRESS, Joint Economic Committee (1973) “The Economics of Military Procurement,” in Haveman, R. H. and Hamrin, R. D. (eds.), The Political Economy of Federal Policy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
U. S. CONGRESS, Congressional Budget Office, (1978) Loan Guarantees: Current Concerns and Alternatives for Control. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel (1975) The Modem World System; Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
WEBER, Max (1949) Max Weber on the Methodology of the Social Sciences. Translated and edited by Edward A. Shills and Henry A. Finch. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
WEBER, Max (1954) On Law in Economy and Society. Edited by Max Rheinstein. Translated by Edward Shills and Max Rheinstein. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
WEBER, Max (1958) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
WEBER, Max (1964) The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
WILENSKY, Harold L. (1975) The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
ZEITLIN, Irving (1973) Rethinking Sociology: A Critique of Contemporary Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar