Popular Culture and Law

The Legal Culture Approach

The Place of Law in Everyday Life

A lawyer observing everyday life in developed societies is able to attribute legal importance to almost every social action. However, the public does not interpret its everyday behavior as legally important. Prosaic living happens in a world distinct from official law, in a domain of taken-for-granted practices that serve to guide and interpret action. Popular culture shows its distance from the official legal system not only in portraying its agents, by making it the butt for malicious jokes, but also in a profound skepticism about law's potential to deliver justice, and often in a strong distaste for using lawyers and courts to solve personal problems. Watching the legal system from an armchair allows for a posture of almost ironic detachment. At the same time, the desire for justice pervades everyday life. Frequently, a lawlike vocabulary serves to justify social action.

Attitudes about using law to solve personal problems are complex and, at first glance, can be contradictory. For instance, people often consider courts useful for the conflicts of others, but personally would go to court only as a place of last resort. Nevertheless, people go to court in considerable numbers. In some countries, such as the United States, business leaders and politicians complain about a litigation explosion. Social scientists answer by linking litigiousness to the breakdown of informal social controls. However, it is not the weakening of traditional authorities of family, church, and community as such that fosters the readiness to sue, but a combination of a particular concept of individualism plus the lack of viable alternatives in the case of conflict. Specific turning points trigger people's willingness to turn to legal institutions for the management of personal problems. Conflict or unforeseen losses raise a sense of entitlement. Conflict arises if expectations of what is natural and right are disappointed. Images of law fostered in the popular culture largely form these expectations. When people have their first encounter with the official legal system, they bring with them expectations learned mainly from the visual mass media.

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