Most sociological discussions of law begin with Weber's definition in which a specific staff is charged with avenging norm violation or ensuring compliance (Economy and Society 1968, p. 34). Weber's goal was to distinguish law from morality and convention, by which a whole community may act to impose sanctions. He also developed his now classic typology of formal legal systems (those limited only to legal as opposed to those legal systems he called "substantive," based on religious, economic, or moral criteria) and rational (those legal systems based on rules as opposed to those involving use of oracles, oaths, and ordeals, for example). Although he was careful to call these distinctions "ideal-types," that caution has not stopped persons from offering specific examples that are actually mixed types, as in speaking of "khadi justice" (a term, unfortunately, used by Weber himself) as a prime example of...