Law and social order constitute important elements of social change and theories of criminology (Schmalleger, 2012). Understanding the interaction between law and social order gives us important insights into how and why governments work or fail. Three different perspectives outline the interaction between the two and help us understand what is happening behind the scenes in various forms of government. These three perspectives are the consensus perspective, the pluralist perspective and the conflict perspective. The consensus perspective has a very naive view of social organization. Within this vision, members of society generally share the same core values ​​(Schmalleger, 2012). Laws, according to the consensus perspective, result from a “consensus” of people and serve each individual equally (Schmalleger, 2012). Those who violate the law are seen as mentally unstable or ineffectively socialized (Schmalleger, 2012). The champion of the consensus perspective is Roscoe Pound, who was the dean of Harvard Law School. He is considered by some to be one of the greatest legal scholars (Schmalleger, 2012). It is interesting to note about Pound that some of his ideas roughly reflect those of Thomas Hobbes. For example; Pound believed that for a civil society to exist, men and women had to believe that others would not commit violent acts against them and would treat them honestly. Furthermore, Pound wrote that members of a civil society must be able to trust that those who keep things will do their jobs and, well, keep things (Schmalleger, 2012). This is similar to Hobbes' idea that men form social contracts with each other and with a central authority figure to escape the fear of death and evil and enable them to pursue culture... middle of paper... ..given this, in the short term, one might suspect that in the long term, under constant pressure from rich groups, the law would develop biases as poor groups are less likely to afford lobbyists acting in their own interests. Through this process, one can imagine how the law would become a tool for the powerful incrementally over time. The symptoms of which seem to mirror a commonly known fact about the United States; the rich are getting richer and the gap between rich and poor is continually increasing. Works Cited Baird, F.E. (ed.). (2011). From Plato to Derrida. Upper Sadle River: Prentice Hall.Dwyer, J. (2010, July 20). Smell of weed and privilege in the city. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/nyregion/21about.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper&Schmalleger, F. (2012). Criminology today: an integrative introduction. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.