Socialization, Legal

Legal socialization is a research field on the processes whereby individuals, essentially from childhood until the end of adolescence, develop a system of cognitive representations, images, and attitudes about law. Although these change owing to experiences during adulthood, they never disappear; the early attitudes continue to underlie the way adults perceive and use law. As part of the general socialization processes in which children and adolescents become social beings, legal socialization consists of an appropriation process through which young people gradually assimilate various elements of law. As Chantal KourilskyAugeven showed in 1997, this includes norms and institutions, as well as related values and relations that regulate society, which people reorganize in their inner world of representations and knowledge. Research on legal socialization is closely linked ...