Law and Society

Some norms are considered so important by a society that they are formalized into laws control­ling people's behavior. In a political sense, law is the "body of rules made by government for soci­ety, interpreted by the courts, and backed by the power of the state" (Cummings and Wise, 1985:519). Some laws, such as the prohibition against murder, are directed at all members of society. Others, such as fishing and hunting regu­lations, are aimed primarily at particular catego­ries of persons. Still others govern the behavior of social institutions (corporation law and laws re­garding the taxing of nonprofit enterprises). De­spite such differences, all these types of laws are considered examples of formal social norms (Chambliss and Seidman, 1971:8).

Sociologists have become increasingly inter­ested in the creation of laws as a social process. Laws are created in response to perceived needs for formal social control. Sociologists have sought to explain how and why such perceptions are manifested. In their view, law is not merely a static body of rules handed down from genera­tion to generation. Rather, it reflects continually changing standards of what is right and wrong, of how violations are to be determined, and of what sanctions are to be applied (Schur, 1968:39-43).

Because of these continually changing stand­ards, yesterday's criminals may be redefined as today's victims. For example, during an antidrug crusade under the Nixon administration, a com­promise was negotiated to balance liberal im­pulses to protect civil liberties and conservative impulses to fully prosecute all violators. As a re­sult, "big drug dealers" were targeted as villains in the antidrug campaign, whereas drug users such as white middle-class young people and urban blacks were viewed as victims rather than as criminals. According to New York City court records from 1969 to 1973, this compromise and redefinition led to increasingly punitive treat­ment of major drug dealers, combined with more lenient treatment of ordinary drug offenders (Hagan and Palloni, 1986:437-438). Sociologists of varying theoretical perspectives agree that the legal order reflects underlying so­cial values. Therefore, the creation of criminal law can be a most controversial matter. Should it be against the law to smoke on an airplane, to have an abortion, or to employ illegal immigrants in a factory? Such issues have been bitterly de­bated, because they require a choice among com­peting values. Clearly, laws those were unpopular— such as the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors under the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 and the establishment of a national 55 mile per hour speed limit on highways in 1973—became difficult to enforce owing to lack of consensus supporting the norm.

It is important to underscore the fact that so­cialization is the primary source of conforming and obedient behavior, including obedience to law. Generally, it is not external pressure from a peer group or authority figure that makes us go along with social norms. Rather, we have inter­nally accepted such norms as valid and desirable and are committed to observing them. In a pro­found sense, we want to see ourselves (and to be seen) as loyal, cooperative, responsible, and re­spectful of others. In American society, and in other societies around the world, individuals are socialized both to want to belong and to fear being viewed as different or even deviant.

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