On Lawmaking

The Recursivity of Law: Global Norm Making and National Lawmaking in the Globalization of Corporate Insolvency Regimes

“…This approach argues that lawmaking is driven by economic, political, and social contradictions, most fundamentally those stemming from the contradictions of capitalism itself (Chambliss 1979;Chambliss and Seidman 1982;Zatz and Chambliss 1993). Contradictions produce disturbances or triggering events (Galliher 1979) that force leaders to find a solution, which they often attempt through law.…”

“…Leaders face dilemmas in resolving these contradictions because they cannot all be solved simultaneously or definitively. Legal changes produce temporary resolutions so long as underlying contradictions persist (Chambliss 1979). Resolution through lawmaking is inherently unstable, and thus, it follows, cycles of attempted resolutions are inevitable.…”

State-Organized Crime, International Law and Structural Contradictions

“…Chambliss's selection of existing criminal law standards in this particular work is rooted in the theoretical framework he used to understand the sociological relationships involved in state-organized crimes like smuggling. The answer to the theoretical question of why state officials will violate the state's own criminal laws lies in the structural contradictions that inhere in nation-states (Chambliss 1979). ''No state can survive without establishing legitimacy,' ' Chambliss (1989, pp.…”

“…The second issue concerns what I call the ''paradox of international law;'' that is, while international law ''on the books'' provides a framework of substantive legal concepts and categories that allows criminologists to define certain state actions as ''crime'' and identify the ''victims'' of these crimes, international law ''in action'' ultimately has failed to provide legal accountability for states and protection and legal recourse for the victims. Chambliss's structural contradictions theory of law (Chambliss 1979;Chambliss and Zatz 1993) can help to explain this paradox.…”

Alternatives to high-risk securities fraud control: proposing structural transformation in an age of financial expansionism and unsustainable global capital

“…Structurally speaking, theoretical bases underpinning the Btoo big to fail^bailouts or the bourgeois state failure to efficaciously address the financial crimes of capitalist accumulation, concentration, and centralization in the banking industry arises from the fundamental contradictions of and processes of capitalist survival [14][15][16] as these economic dynamics intermingle with the institutionalized patterns of control frauds (W. [17], influential market corruptions [18], and crime control system incapacities [19]. These political economies of capitalist crime and crime control as well as the constituent workings of the legislative and judicial bodies were incorporated, elaborated upon and synthesized by Barak [7] into his reciprocal model of Wall Street securities fraud that explains not only the etiology of the Wall Street financial implosion of 2008, but also why these types of global investment banking collapses are no less likely to occur in the future than they were before the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.…”