Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:01:48.037Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Laura Beth Nielsen
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The legal consciousness of ordinary citizens concerning offensive public speech is a phenomenon whose legal status has been vigorously debated, but which has received little empirical analysis. Drawing on observations in public spaces in three northern California communities and in-depth interviews with 100 subjects recruited from these public locations, I analyze variation across race and gender groups in experiences with offensive public speech and attitudes about how such speech should be dealt with by law. Among these respondents, white women and people of color are far more likely than white men to report being the targets of offensive public speech. However, white women and people of color are not significantly more likely than white men to favor its legal regulation. Respondents generally oppose the legal regulation of offensive public speech, but they employ different discourses to explain why. Subjects' own words suggest four relatively distinct paradigms that emphasize the First Amendment, autonomy, impracticality, and distrust of authority. Members of different racial and gender groups tend to use different discourses. These differences suggest that the legal consciousness of ordinary citizens is not a unitary phenomenon, but must be situated in relation to particular types of laws, particular social hierarchies, and the experiences of different groups with the law.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , 2000 , pp. 1055 - 1090
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Law and Society Association

Footnotes

In addition to the individuals who gave generously of their time to participate in the interviews, I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of people who aided me in the research and/or read and commented on earlier drafts, including Catherine (KT) Albiston, Lauren Edelman, Patricia Ewick, Bryant Garth, Kaaryn Gustafson, Angela Harris, Alva Hayslip, Michele Landis, Ann Lucas, Kristin Luker, Robert Nelson, Judy Nielsen, Eric Sorensen, Amy Steigerwalt, and the anonymous reviewers from Law & Society Review. Brooke Bedrick provided assistance coding the data. Although not directly involved with this project, Robert Meister always deserves my thanks.

References

Bowman, Cynthia Grant (1993) “Street Harassment and the Informal Ghettoization of Women,” 106 Harvard Law Rev. 517–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bumiller, Kristin (1988) The Civil Rights Society: The Social Construction of Victims. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith (1997) Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Delgado, Richard (1993) “Words That Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Insults, Epithets, and Name Calling,” in Matsuda, J. M., Lawrence, C. R., Delgado, R. & Crenshaw, K. Williams, eds. Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Downs, Donald Alexander (1985) Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community, and the First Amendment. Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, & Silbey, Susan S. (1992) “Conformity, Contestation, and Resistance: An Account of Legal Consciousness,” 26 New England Law Rev. 731—49.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, & Silbey, Susan S. (1998) The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feagin, Joe R. (1991) “The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places,” 56 American Sociological Rev. 101–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, Lon (1964) The Morality of Law. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Gardner, Carol Brooks (1980) “Passing By: Street Remarks, Address Rights, and Urban Woman,” 50 Sociological Inquiry 328.Google Scholar
Gardner, Carol Brooks (1995) Passing By: Gender and Public Harassment. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Garnets, Linda, Herek, Gregory M. & Levy, Barrie (1992) “Violence and Victimization of Lesbians and Gay Men: Mental Health Consequences,” in Herek, G. M. & Berrill, K. T., eds., Hate Crimes: Confronting Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men. Newbury Park, NJ: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Glendon, Mary Ann (1991) Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Landrine, Hope, & Klonoff, Elizabeth A. (1996) “The Schedule of Racist events: A Measure of Racial Discrimination and a Study of Its Negative Physical and Mental Health Consequences,” 22 J. of Black Psychology 144–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, Charles (1990) “If He Hollers Let Him Go: Regulation of Racist Speech on Campus,” Duke Law J. 431–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lind, E. Allan, & Tyler, Tom R. (1988) The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice. New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lofland, John, & Lofland, Lyn H. (1995) Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and Analysis. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catharine (1993) Only Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Madriz, Esther (1997) Nothing Bad Happens to Good Girls: Fear of Crime in Women's Lives. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matsuda, Mari J. (1993) “Public Responses to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim's Story,” in Matsuda, M.J., Lawrence, C. R., Delgado, R. & Crenshaw, K. Williams, eds., Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael W. (1994) Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization (Language and Legal Discourse). Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael W. (1999) Review of The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life, by P. Ewick & S. S. Silbey, 105 American J. of Sociology 238–40.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael W., & March, Tracey (1996) “Law and Everyday Forms of Resistance: A Socio-Political Assessment,” 15 Studies in Law, Politics & Society 207–36.Google Scholar
McClosky, Herbert, & Brill, Alida (1983) Dimensions of Tolerance: What Americans Believe about Civil Liberties. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle (1990) Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Laura Beth (1999) License to Harass: Offensive Public Speech, Legal Consciousness, and Hierarchies of Race, Gender, and Class. Ph.D. diss., Jurisprudence and Social Policy, Univ. of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Post, Robert (1991) “Racist Speech, Democracy, and the First Amendment,” 32 William & Mary Law Rev. 267—327.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin (1990) “... The Law Is All Over': Power, Resistance, and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor,” 2 Yale J. of Law & the Humanities 343—79.Google Scholar
Stouffer, Samuel A. (1992 [1955]) Communism, Conformity, & Civil Liberties: A Cross-Section of the Nation Speaks Its Mind. New York: Doubleday & Co.; reprint, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Suchman, Mark C., & Edelman, Lauren B. (1996) Legal Rational Myths: The New Institutionalism and the Law & Society Tradition. 21 Law & Social Inquiry 903–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, John L., Piereson, James & Marcus, George E. (1982) Political Tolerance and American Democracy. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1975) Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark (1984) “An Essay on Rights” 62 Texas Law Rev. 1363—1403.Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom R. (1990) Why People Obey the Law. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
West, Robin (1987) “The Difference in Women's Hedonic Lives: A Phenomenological Critique of Feminist Legal Theory,” 3 Wisconsin Women's Law J. 81—145.Google Scholar
White, Lucie (1991) “Subordination, Rhetorical Survival Skills, and Sunday Shoes: Notes on the Hearing of Mrs G.,” in Fineman, M. A. & Thomadsen, N. S., eds., At the Boundaries of Law: Feminism and Legal Theory. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Williams, Patricia (1991) The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar