Table Of ContentLegal Socialization
Ellen S. Cohn Susan O. White
Legal Socialization
A STUDY OF NORMS AND RULES
Springer-Verlag
New York Berlin Heidelberg
London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong
Ellen S. Cohn, PhD
Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire
Durham, New Hampshire 03824-3567, USA
Susan O. White, PhD
Department of Political Science, University of New Hampshire
Durham, New Hampshire 03824-3567, USA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cohn, Ellen S.
Legal socialization: a study of norms and rules/Ellen S. Cohn,
Susan O. White.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-7989-1 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-3378-7
DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4612-3378-7
1. Sociological jurisprudence. 1. White, Susan O. II. Title.
K270.C64 1990
340' . 115--dc20 89-49256
Printed on acid-free paper
© 1990 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990
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987654321
To David and Erica
E. S. C.
To Ellen
S. O. W.
Preface
This book began with a meeting of the minds between two people from dif
ferent disciplines. Each of us had a long-time interest in the role of law in
political and social life, particularly its influence on the normative order.
Ellen Cohn, a psychologist, had done research on the social psychology of
perceptions of crime and other law-related issues. Susan White is a political
scientist who had studied compliance behavior and socialization to rules.
Fortuitously, one of us was a member of our university's student conduct
board, which provides a view of student life that faculty seldom see. This
view provided the basis for our early discussions of the kinds of behaviors
that occurred on campus, the attitudes of student board members toward
judging their peers, and the effects of enforcement practices.
It became clear that we were observing the political, social, and psycho
logical dynamics of a legal culture. Incoming students were learning both
the norms of behavior that prevailed among their peers and the enforce
ment practices of those in authority. The constant interplay between norms
and rules created a fertile environment for legal socialization in which each
occasion for enforcing a rule became an occasion for testing one's values
and beliefs. When asked informally, students usually offered well-formed
reasons for their actions and judgments. At the same time, strong en
vironmental pressures were clearly apparent. We discussed the unresolved
gap in the literature between social learning and legal development ex
planations of legal socialization and decided that our student community
was a perfect natural setting in which to test these competing hypotheses.
The result was an interdisciplinary research design and collaboration that
received the financial support of our university and the National Science
Foundation. We are grateful to Dean Stuart Palmer of the College of
Liberal Arts and to President Gordon Haaland of the University of New
Hampshire for their early support and encouragement. National Science
Foundation Grant SES-8112020 provided the funding for managing the
quasi-experiment and the data collection and analysis. Ellen Cohn received
a Summer Faculty Fellowship from the Graduate School of the University
of New Hampshire to support her work on the project. Susan White was
Vll
Vlll Preface
released from teaching responsibilities by the University of New Hamp
shire through its Faculty Scholar program.
Support from the Division of Student Affairs at the University of New
Hampshire was essential for conducting the study. We wish to express our
appreciation to J. Gregg Sanborn, associate vice president and dean for
student affairs; Carol Bischoff, director of residential life; Scott Chesney,
associate director of residential life; and the many hall directors who helped
us, especially Dan Slattery and Karen Rowe. Marianna Grimes provided
invaluable assistance during the data collection process. Sibylle Carlson
helped in the early stages of coding and analyzing the data. The study could
not have been completed without extensive help from many RAs, who
must remain unnamed, although much appreciated. Finally, we must thank
the many members of the residential community whose role as subjects
provided the data for this research.
Research assistance came in several forms. Psychology graduate students
Susan Newman, Danny Malloy, Mae Lynn Neyhart, and Saul Rosenthal
assisted in both the data collection and the quantitative data analysis stages.
Psychology undergraduate students Jesse LaCrosse, Patricia Smigielski,
and Kirsten Gannon helped with the data coding and analysis and the typing
of the manuscript. Students in Susan White's seminars contributed invalu
able observational data. We especially thank Linda Foulsham and Alison
Porteous for their help in data collection and qualitative data analysis. Both
Anna Moses and Donna Hardy are to be commended for their help in the
final preparation of the manuscript.
Many colleagues and students contributed helpful comments on early
papers and the text of this book. We want to thank Joan McCord, David
Sugarman, Felice Levine, June Louin Tapp, Rebecca Warner, Kathleen
McCartney, Victor Benassi, Ann Diller, Susan Newman, Marcy Kraus,
James Grosch, Mae Lynn Neyhart, and Nancy Asdigian. We also
appreciate the warm support of Dr. Robert Kidd of Springer-Verlag
throughout the process of writing this book.
Finally, we want to thank Ellen Corcoran, a colleague and third collab
orator in the data collection process. Ellen would never write this kind of
book, so we take pains to relieve her of any responsibility for the analysis
we have presented. But we note with gratitude that the book could not have
been written at all without her extensive interviewing skills and her
capacity to inspire the trust and confidence of students and staff.
Contents
Preface ...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. vii
Prologue ................................................................................ Xl
An Introduction to Legal Socialization .......................................... 1
Part I: Legal Socialization Theory ........................................... 7
1 Studying Legal Socialization ......................................... 9
2 Comparing Theories of Legal Socialization ........................ 27
3 Scope of the Study ...................................................... 50
Part II: Testing Competing Hypotheses ..................................... 59
4 Changes in Legal Socialization over Time ........................ 61
5 Testing Competing Hypotheses ..................................... 78
6 Effects,ofthe Interaction .............................................. 88
Part III: Exploring the Interaction ............................................. 97
7 Legal Reasoning and Behaviors: The Mediating Model ....... 99
8 Offender Status ......................................................... 135
9 A Comparison of Two Rule-Enforcing Experiences ........... 152
Conclusion ............................................................................. 180
Epilogue ................................................................................ 197
References ............................................................................. 198
Appendix ................................................................................ 209
Author List .............................................................................. 217
Subject Index ........................................................................... 219
IX
Prologue
"I guess people do respond best when the rules and guidelines are clear-cut.
It seems to me, though, that it would be better to have people thinking them
selves about what is right and wrong and make their decisions accordingly."
"I mean, so what if they're being responsible, they're still breaking the
rules. "
On a Thursday evening in November Carol and Steve, the two RAs (hall
staff) on duty, were walking the corridors of H-- Hall on their hourly
rounds. They smelled a familiar odor in the air. After some investigation,
including sniffing under the doors of several rooms, they determined that
the marijuana odor was coming from a room where a party was underway.
Behind the closed doors, a stereo was blaring loudly. Steve knocked on the
door. There was no response from inside, so Steve banged heavily on the
door and shouted to get someone's attention.
After several minutes of banging, the door opened and two people walked
out casually. They had not answered the door but instead were just leaving
the party. Steve and Carol stood unnoticed in the open doorway, sharply
scanning the room. Finally, Steve banged on the wall and yelled out,
"Bob!" to someone sitting on the sofa. Bob looked around and the nine
people in the room grew silent. Bob got up and turned down the stereo.
"Bob and Joe, will you come outside for a minute?" Carol requested.
Out in the hall, Steve asked, "Are you smoking pot in there?" Joe said,
"There's been some pot smoked, but what right do you have walking in on
us?" Carol said, "We have to write you up for Jud Board." Bob replied,
angrily, "Has anyone complained? Go ahead and write us up. We'll see
what happens."
The case was scheduled for a hearing before the student Judicial Board on
the following Tuesday. The penalty for a finding of guilty would be eviction
from the residence hall.
Xl
An Introduction to Legal
Socialization
Rules are pervasive in human experience. They define much of our public
life and reach extensively into our private relationships. The institutions
within which we carryon our daily lives are both sources and enforcers of
rules. Family, place of worship, school, workplace are all settings in which
rules structure and compel the behavior of participants. But rules are not
only pervasive; they are largely successful. Much of the time we obey them
without thinking because we have learned to do so and our behavioral rou
tines require it. It is seldom necessary to use force, although invoking
authority is common. Distinctions are necessary in order to understand
rule-governed behavior, however, because compliance does vary consider
ably across both individuals and situations. Some rules are self-imposed or
voluntarily agreed to, whereas others are promulgated and enforced by
governmental authority. And despite the efficacy of rules for most of us,
some individuals Seem impervious to their power.
Whatever the basis for our compliance, it is clear that rules carry some
kind of psychological imperative, and often a moral obligation, to which
human beings in general respond. Indeed, more interesting than the rules
themselves are the ways in which rules are enforced and our varied
responses to that enforcement. Rules are the tools of authority, and their
means of enforcement are prime indicators of legitimacy. Our concepts of
rights, duties, fairness, and other similar values stem not only from philo
sophical principles but also from our experiences with rule enforcement.
The fact that these concepts may differ from individual to individual and
group to group is in part a function of our different experiences with
authority. These prescriptive values are products of both personal and
historical learning because they represent the exercise of authority over
time at various levels of social and political life. Legal socialization is the
study of how these concepts and related behavioral responses are learned.
It is, therefore, fundamentally the study of rule enforcement and its sur
rounding attitudes and behaviors.
Our responses to rule enforcement may be positive or negative. Feelings
of attachment to figures of authority or to the nation and "commitment
1
2 An Introduction to Legal Socialization
to the rule of law" are two examples of positive response. But enforce
ment also reveals the coercive nature of authority. Negative responses to
authority-from rebellion to civil disobedience to crime-are common in
the face of coercion, whether by police or by parents. Understanding these
varying responses, their genesis, and the conditions under which they occur
is the subject of this book. The obvious complexity of the subject poses a
special challenge to empirical analysis. The very pervasiveness of rule
enforcement, however, suggests that behavioral generalizations are poss
ible despite the variety of circumstances in which it occurs. The study
reported here was launched in that belief.
The Study
We start with three premises. The first has to do with theoretical complex
ity, the second with empirical validity, and the third with methodological
demands. Each premise represents a choice of alternative approaches to
the study of legal socialization, a choice forced by the complexity of the
subject matter. They are to some extent unhappy choices because they
exclude other, often intriguing, possibilities. But they also reflect our
judgment about the need to advance research in this field by interdisci
plinary means. In this respect, they are truly happy choices because they
are driven by the questions intrinsic to the subject matter rather than by
the requirements of a particular discipline. Our reasoning follows.
Socialization and Multiple Learning Dimensions
Legal socialization is a form of social learning, but it is theoretically com
plex because there are at least three learning dimensions. Figuratively
speaking, one of these dimensions is vertical, another horizontal, and a
third longitudinal. The vertical dimension refers to the multiple levels of
rule-governed behavior within a society. Depending on the complexity of a
society, an individual may encounter many levels of authority in the same
day. The question is: Does contact with authority and rule enforcement at
one level (e.g., the family) generate the same behavioral response as
similar contact at another level (e.g., a state's criminal laws)? If yes, then
what behavioral mechanism accounts for such a complex response pattern?
If no, then what are the different behavioral linkages between the indi
vidual and the multiple levels of authority in a society (Easton & Dennis,
1969; Jennings & Niemi, 1974, 1981; Krislov, Boyum, Clark, Shaefer, &
White, 1972; Merelman, 1969; Sears, 1975)? Equally perplexing is the
horizontal range of situational and cultural variation in rule enforcement.
Studying the extent of subcultural and other group variation in a pluralistic
society discourages a theoretical reach for a single behavioral mechan
ism (Geertz, 1973). Cross-cultural variation only expands the problem
(Renshon, 1977).
