CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Criminal Justice System In England



Abstract

Exploring outcomes ranging from individuals' attitudinal support for judges and courts to corporations' behavioral acceptance of nonbinding arbitration decisions in federal contract and tort disputes, sociologists of law continue to examine how variation in law's legitimacy relates to variation in perceived procedural justice and to variation in subjective and objective desirability of outcomes achieved (Tyler et al. 1989; Lind et al. 1993). Finally, in a separate line of work grounded in experimental results showing that, over time, collective recognition of a binding rule produces the internalization of that rule by many members of the collective, Stryker (1989, 1994, 2000b) examined the relationship between the legal system's incorporation of scientific modes of reasoning and evidence and law's legitimacy. Whereas Weber failed to distinguish clearly between formal-legal and scientific rationalization, later scholars did so. This made it possible for Stryker (1994, 2000b) to theorize the cognitive, normative, and instrumental mechanisms linking legitimacy of litigation processes and results to the expanding role for cause-effect reasoning, scientific experts, and evidence within litigation. Because Stryker (1994, 2000b) focuses especially on how compliance and failure to comply are part of a broader set of processes producing both legal stability and legal change through legal and political mobilization and conflict, her work segues between the topic of obedience to law and the second major category of research on law and social action, that of legal consciousness and mobilization.

Lawrence Friedman (1989) distinguished between legal culture and popular legal culture. The former refers to ideas, ideals, beliefs, values, norms, attitudes, and behavioral predispositions about and toward law held and practiced by those working within formal-legal institutions. For example, the concept of precedent is an important part of American legal culture and of all common- or case-law-oriented legal culture. Without understanding what precedent is and how it works, no lawyer can practice nor can any judge adjudicate disputes by interpreting and applying prior adjudicative law (Shapiro and Stone Sweet 2002). Popular legal culture refers to ideas, ideals, beliefs, values, norms, and behavioral predispositions about and toward law held and practiced by laypeople. The study of popular legal culture, now relabeled legal consciousness, is a current growth enterprise among sociologists of law, who, like their counterparts in other sociological subfields, experienced a cultural turn. Legal consciousness is intimately related to legal mobilization, since “how people envision law affects whether and how people mobilize legal tools at their disposal” (Edelman and Stryker 2005:530, citing Fuller et al. 2000).

Substantial scholarship exists investigating the extent, patterns, and outcomes of mobilization of specific types of law, including labor, employment, and civil rights law (Bumiller 1987; Burstein 1991; Forbath 1991; McCammon and Kane 1997; McCammon 2001). For example, McCammon (2001) analyzed time series data for the period 1948-1978 and found that the filing of unfair labor practice charges by workers increased as union representation elections increased. Examining the post-World War II period, McCammon and Kane (1997) found that the likelihood of court rulings for workers increased as the number ...