The movement toward decentralized, informal dispute resolution centers is partly a product of a fiscal crisis of the state, the recent attack on formal legalism, the law being used to effect social planning in the modern welfare state, and the need for law to absorb some of the impact of the corporate welfare state's loss of legitimacy in various crisis periods. Models of informal justice include the juvenile justice system, Danzig's concept of community dispute resolution centers, Fisher's concept of the community court, and Sander's model of neighborhood justice centers. Critiques of the informal justice experiment focus on legitimation, community autonomy, bureaucratization, deprofessionalization, access to and the form of justice, consensus and conflict, the value of neutrality, the role of coercion, and the fundamental roots of disputes. Overall, informalism and decentralization vindicate rather than challenge the dominant legal system. This is done by deflecting attention from the contradictions and problems of the formal legal process. 54 references.