Law and social order are 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 describe the interaction between the two and help us understand what goes on behind the scenes of different forms of government. These three perspectives are the consensual, pluralist and conflicting perspectives. The consensus perspective has a very naive view of social organization. From this perspective, members of society generally share the same fundamental values ​​(Schmalleger, 2012). Laws, according to the consensus perspective, result from a “consensus” of the people and equally serve each individual (Schmalleger, 2012). Those who break the law are considered 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 specialists (Schmalleger, 2012). It is interesting to note about Pound that some of his ideas roughly mirror those of Thomas Hobbes. For example; Pound believed that for a civilized society to exist, men and women must believe that others would not commit acts of violence against them and would treat them honestly. Furthermore, Pound wrote that members of a civilized society must be able to trust that those who maintain things will do their job and, of course, maintain things (Schmalleger, 2012). This is similar to Hobbes's idea that men enter into social contracts with each other and with a central authority figure in order to escape fears of death and wrongdoing and allow them to continue their culture on a paper.... ...on the other hand, in the short term, one might suspect that in the long term, under constant pressure from rich groups, the law would develop biases since poor groups are less likely to afford lobbyists acting in their own interest. Through this process, we can imagine how the law would gradually become a tool at the service of the powerful. The symptoms seem to reflect a well-known fact in the United States; the rich are getting richer and the gap between rich and poor is continually increasing. Works Cited Baird, FE (Ed.). (2011). From Plato to Derrida. Upper Sadle River: Prentice Hall. Dwyer, J. (July 20, 2010). A smell of pot 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.