Abstract
Excerpt: W. Michael Reisman's Law in Brief Encounters is a cogent and lucid analysis of how authoritative rules, elaborate codes, and sanctions operate to create what he calls micro legal systems. Reisman is the McDougal Professor of Law at the Yale Law School and has devoted nearly twenty years of research to the law "found in all human relations, from the simplest, briefest, encounters between two people to the most inclusive and permanent type of interactions." This book is a rich and rewarding analysis of life in mass society as a series of micro situations (looking at others, talking, standing in line, and the like), often with strangers who collectively produce micro legal environments. The author argues that understanding micro legal systems promotes a "better understanding of the distribution function of law, the things people want and desperately don't want."
