Law in Social Life (1) Flashcards
What is law? What is law’s function in society (5)? What do we want it to do?
We want to resolve our conflicts and ensure justice.
Maintain order, maintain social order, government (they make the law, criminal code), protect us from each other, gives consequence in conflict
How does the law end conflicts?
You tell a lawyer or police officer your story who then makes a ruthless calculation and narrows it down to only the most relevant details in a court of law or change it to a legal problem that may not even be your original conflict, where it will be taken into the courts totally out of your hands and ended for you, with a lack of regard for your interests
Who do we have to enforce the law (three c’s)?
What do we expect them to do?
We have functionaries within the law that maintain order and enforce the law (cops, courts and corrections)
Expect to address our problems but in fact they’ll just finish them
What are law and justice concerned with/about? (3)
Concerned with how people ought to act in a given set of circumstances when different actions are possible
If you want something, you could realistically just take it but something stops us - not morality but fear of punishment
Law is about trying to force people to make choices that maintain order in society
How can law differ in how it looks?
Law looks different depending on how you view order and what it should look like
How are law and coercion related (2)?
Law is about choices but it’s also about coercion as the coercive element is present in all elements of law (just more prevalent in some over others)
Law is always about a measure of coercion but also deeply rooted in the fabric of the society that creates it
Who was Max Weber and what did he theorize?
Conflict theorist interested in the relationship between law and capitalism
Believe capitalism leads to a particular kind of legal system where coercion plays a large part (believed an order is considered law if it is guaranteed by coercion)
Concerned with tension between conforming due to conformity or going along due to fear of oppression
Authorized imposition of physical or psychological coercion to direct behavior/avenge wrong doing
Who was Karl Marx and what did he theorize?
Interested in class impact on daily social life (communism) and saw law as a pervasive legitimizing ideology that masks the relationships of exploitation that are integral to capitalism (law and coercion are a tool used by the rich bourgeoisie to keep the power dynamics of capitalism over the poor proletariat)
Trump is the epitome of everything Marx warned us about (billionaires making the law)
Who was Donald Black and what did he theorize?
Saw law as essentially governmental social control, where different societies will produce different laws and legal structures but always directed toward the same goal: survival
Society will produce more or less formal law based on the larger structures of society itself (smaller societies will have less formal law as there are strong networks of cross cutting ties which force them to maintain social order (can’t murder someone because you rely on them or are related to them in some way) whereas larger societies (impacted by capitalism) don’t have these relations and interdependence so they require more formal law to maintain order
Law as a quantitative variable
Is the relationship between law and crime inverse?
Not necessarily as smaller homogenous societies themed to have less conflict and thus require less formalized law
Larger heterogenous societies tend to have more conflict and require more formal law
Who was E. Adamson Hoebel and what did he theorize?
Worked with Llewelyn and said every society has law only in different forms
Both looked for law by looking for social norms that were clearly legal as there were consequences for crossing that line by people who receive the socially recognized privilege right of acting so (with force or coercion)
What are “legal” social norms characterized by? (3)
Explicit rules of conduct
Planned use of sanctions to support the rules
Designated officials to interpret and enforce the rules, and often to make them
What we’re Heobel and Llewellyn’s four functions of law?
- The definition of relationships among members of society (law specifies boundaries of acceptable behavior and these boundaries create predictability which makes life easier)
- The allocation of authority and the right to exercise physical coercion as a socially-recognized privilege right (requires the allocation of authority, determination of who may exercise physical coercion and selection of the most effective sanctions)
- The disposition of trouble cases as they arise (somebody/something has to clean the case up and that is actually gets dealt with)
- To adapt to change in social life and redefine relationships accordingly (law must be mutable and both push and and respond to social change; always a little bit behind as it needs case law to give it substance)
How does the case of Wolf Lies Down demonstrate the four functions of law?
A friend of Wolf Lies Down borrowed a horse and left his bow and arrows to show who he was and that he’d return it; the problem was that he was gone a year, longer than expected, so Wolf Lies Down went to the chiefs, the friend was forced to return where he explained and gave Wolf Lies Down compensation in form of his original horse plus another horse; Chiefs made new rule where there will be no borrowing without asking or else there will be consequences
Demonstrates four rules (violated expectation to bring it back soon, went to chiefs who had privilege right, disposed of case and adapted old rule)
What were Nils Christie’s 4 problems with modern, formal law and legal systems?
Saw that conflicts have been taken away/stolen in our society from the parties
- Courts are located outside the geography of daily life
- Courthouses are complex and difficult to navigate
- Parties are peripheral to legal proceedings
- Legal system steals disputes from disputants
