Studying American Legal Culture: An Assessment of Survey Evidence

but only in specific situations; thus knowledge of the law can never be precise since legal rights are always at the mercy of events. Despite the problem of measurement, it is worth noting that each of the major surveys indicates that knowledge of the law is substantially greater with respect to criminal than civil matters (Sarat, 1975; Michigan Law Review, 1973; Williams and Hall, 1972; Albrecht, 1974; Cortese, 1966). Citizens typically know more about what they are entitled to expect of and demand from public authority and less about what the law sanctions in their relations with other private individuals. This is to some extent a function of the emphasis on crime and criminal law in mass culture, but it also marks a significant element in the legal culture, the dominant view that the proper scope and value of law is to regulate the exercise of government authority. In spite of the rather widespread ignorance of the law there is some evidence of an equally widespread belief in the appropriateness of using law and legal processes as problem-solving devices. This is not to say, however, that law is a preferred means for dealing with problems. We know that relatively few of society's disputes are handled by the legal system. To some extent this reflects an awareness of the costs of mobilizing the law (Friedman, 1967). But it is still true that "the reluctance of citizens to mobilize the law is so widespread . . . that it may be appropriate to view legal inaction as the dominant pattern of empirical legal life" (Black, 1973:133). Yet resort to law is not considered to be deviant behavior. The American Bar Foundation's recent national survey of legal needs asked, for example, whether "a person should not call upon a lawyer until he has exhausted every other possible way of solving his problem." Forty-two percent of those interviewed agreed, 55 percent disagreed (Curran and Spalding, 1974:94). Furthermore, Jacob's four-city study in Wisconsin reports that slightly less than half of those without experience in court displayed a high level of "judicial efficacy," that is, they believed that courts are appropriate mechanisms for dealing with their personal problems (1969:119). Because most people do not know the full range of their legal rights and because of the high cost of using the law, participation in its administration or enforcement is not widespread. Such participation is generally concentrated among those social groups who are regularly able to avail themselves of expert help, afford the costs of mobilizing the law, and aggressively use the law to further their interests and goals (Galanter, 1974). Most individual This content downloaded from 207.46.13.176 on Mon, 20 Jun 2016 05:35:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 452 11 LAW & SOCIETY / WINTER 1977 citizens possess neither the expertise nor the resources necessary to do so (Wanner, 1974; Galanter, 1975).19 Yet citizens are not wholly incompetent or unable to participate. Aggrieved individuals generally first seek less costly nonlegal remedies (Sarat, 1976), but feel no "moral" inhibitions about using the law. The pattern of participation is typically sporadic and somewhat reluctant, but the legal system is, nonetheless, open. Americans seem to possess enough knowledge, a sufficiently well developed sense of their rights and sufficient confidence in the law to participate in a defensive manner, to use the law to remedy past grievances if not to create new opportunities. In this sense, our legal culture reflects and shapes our legal institutions; it is reactive but not quiescent. What about the problem of obedience to law? If Americans do not turn to law readily and actively to solve problems, how do they respond to its directions? Are they more enthusiastic as subjects than they are as participants? Like attitudes toward the police, the disposition to obey law and to recognize the law's obligatory character develops early in childhood (Koeppen, 1972; Torney, 1971). Research on the development of those ideas has frequently taken the form of a general inquiry into the development of legal reasoning, the processes through which individuals interpret, define, and make decisions about the roles, rules, rights and responsibilities offered or imposed by the legal system (Tapp and Levine, 1974:19). Furthermore, many studies of legal thought accept the assumptions of developmental psychology that there are distinctive, organized structures of reasoning which are stable across situations and across cultures, that these develop in an invariant sequence of age-related stages, and that the process of development is self-regulated but not immune to environmental influences (Tapp and Levine, 1974:15; Kohlberg and Kramer, 1969). Whether or not one accepts the extravagant claims of developmental psychology, the research that it has inspired provides a significant basis for understanding the emergence of attitudes toward law and law abidingness. For the young child, law is first associated with rules not rights. Rules and laws are viewed as essential to the maintenance of social order and as a vital defense against social chaos (Tapp and Kohlberg, 1971:73-79). They are perceived to be immutable, imperative and fair (Adelson et al., 1969; Torney, 1971). Young children associate law with obedience by reason of their fear of 19. Galanter (1975) reviews studies of the characteristics of litigants in trial courts and finds that individuals acting outside of a business or professional capacity are more often involved as defendants than as plaintiffs. Organizations and government agencies comprise the largest group of plaintiffs. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.176 on Mon, 20 Jun 2016 05:35:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms