The Power of Legitimacy in Obedience to the Law: Understanding Why People Obey Laws, Study notes of Business and Labour Law

Download The Power of Legitimacy in Obedience to the Law: Understanding Why People Obey Laws and more Study notes Business and Labour Law in PDF only on Docsity! The Power of Legitimacy in Obedience to the Law Introduction to Legal Studies (Legal 250-2) UMass Amherst, Spring 2007 (Hilbink) March 6, 2007 1 Why do people obey the law? Considering that there are relatively few members of society whose primary role is to enforce laws – far less than would be needed to directly force us all to obey, or catch us if we all disobeyed – why is society still largely made up of generally lawful people, even when it comes to laws that keep them from having things they need or want? In the absence of authority figures who can directly compel obedience, it is a sense that laws are just and legitimate that causes people to honor them; therefore, the power to compel obedience to the law is derived from the power to sway public opinion to the belief that the law and its agents are legitimate and deserving of this obedience. The power of perceived legitimacy to compel obedience is so great that it frequently makes people act against their own self-interest. The drug trafficker waiving his Constitutional protections and agreeing to let drug enforcement officers search his bag, despite the fact that he knows full well it contains illegal drugs (Florida 294), is clearly acting under a strong influence to obey the wishes of the police officers. As Peter Kropotkin points out in his essay “Law and Authority”, this attitude towards the law has been deeply engrained in our society since the advent of the middle class after the French Revolution; in response to the rampant abuse of authority by the nobility, strict adherence to the law was conceived as the ultimate equalizer within society. “Whatever this law might be,” Kropotkin writes, “it promised to affect lord and peasant alike; it proclaimed the equality of rich and poor before the judge” (159). Furthermore, 4 laws were changed. Clearly, obedience to the law hinges upon the public perception that the law is legitimate. Legitimacy of the law is not the only factor in determining obedience, but from a study of the power of legitimacy, the ways in which legitimacy can be increased, and the effects of a large-scale breakdown of legitimacy, it is clear that the degree of faith in law’s legitimacy plays a significant role in compelling society to obey. 5 Works Cited Bonsignore, John J., Ethan Katsh, Peter d’Errico, Ronald M. Pipkin, Stephen Arons, and Janet Rifkin. Before The Law: An Introduction to the Legal Process. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. d’Errico, Peter. “The Law Is Terror Put into Words.” Bonsignore, Katsh, d’Errico, Pipkin, Arons, and Rifkin 246-249. Florida v. Bostick, 489 U.S. 656 (1991). Bonsignore, Katsh, d’Errico, Pipkin, Arons, and Rifkin 293-299. Goldstein, Herman. “Confronting the Complexity of the Policing Function.” Bonsignore, Katsh, d’Errico, Pipkin, Arons, and Rifkin 265-272. King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Excerpt from ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’.” Bonsignore, Katsh, d’Errico, Pipkin, Arons, and Rifkin 251-253. Kropotkin, Peter. “Law and Authority.” Bonsignore, Katsh, d’Errico, Pipkin, Arons, and Rifkin 158-162. Tweed, Harrison, Bernard G. Segal, and Herbert L. Packer. “Civil Rights and Disobedience To Law.” Presbyterian Life 1 February 1964: 6-9. Tyler, Tom. “Why People Obey the Law.” Law & Society: Readings on the Social Study of Law. Ed. Stewart Macaulay, Lawrence M. Friedman, and John Stookey. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995. 474-495. NOTE: This paper used the MLA documentations style for in-text citations and the Works Cited section.