Chapter 5
Law, Status, Wealth and Power
Intro:
Max Weber: Law is coercive order. Compare custom, ethics, religion. Law is about allocating status and wealth.
Do wealthy get better deal? Do wealthy and powerful manipulate rules to their own benefit?
5.1 Das Kapital, “The Working Day,” Karl Marx
Report on child labor. Children 7-10 years old work 15 hour days, 6 days a week, in factories.
Certain diseases becoming common to workers in industry.
5.2 American Textile Mfrs. Inst. v. Donovan, 452
Facts: 1970 act created OSHA. In 1978, OSHA made a new rule limiting amount of cotton dust in the workplace to prevent brown lung disease.
Issue: Must OSHA conduct a cost benefit analysis to determine whether the rule is beneficial?
Holding: No. OSHA may insist on the most protective standard.
Reasoning: Statute says OSHA must set rules limiting dangerous conditions “to the extent feasible.” Court interprets that to mean command is to go to the limits of technology.
5.3 The State, Lenin
In earliest human times, people lived in small groups with no need for a state. The state only appears when a small group needs to dominate the others. The small group divides itself into a separate class.
Slavery and
feudalism appears at some point, although