Law in Practice

Pick 1 topic only and discuss each specific question within the essay question. The essay must be 4-6 full double spaced typed pages (12 font, 1” margins). Please refer to the syllabus for the policy on plagiarism. Any instance of plagiarism will result in an automatic ZERO points for the paper.

Paper Topics

1. It’s Not What It Seems: Law in Practice
   In Chapter 6, Calavita discusses the gap between law-in-action and law-on-the-books in several different ways (e.g. law as dormant or as partial/selective nonenforcement). She also discusses the need to study law in action because “real law” affects peoples’ lives and also shows us “workings of the law” and “the workings of society” (Calavita 2010: 114). Pick at least THREE of the following articles to discuss how they highlight the gap between law-in-action and law-on-the-books AND how their research reveals the workings of law and of society and how law perpetuates existing social inequalities.

• Hunt, Jennifer. 1986. Police Uses of ‘Normal Force.’
• Frohmann, Lisa. 1997. “Convictability and Discordant Locales: Reproducing Race, Class, & Gender Ideology in Prosecutorial Decisionmaking.” Law & Society Review 31:531-55.
• Emerson, Robert. “Holistic Effects in Social Control Decision-Making.”
• Sudnow, David. 1965. “Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal Code in a Public Defender Office.” Social Problems. 12 (3): 255-276
• Harris, Alexes, Heather Evans, and Katherine Beckett. 2010. “Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States.” American Journal of Sociology 115(6): 1753-1799
• Calavita, Kitty. 2000. “The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity, and “Passing”: Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882-1910.” Law & Social Inquiry 25 (1): 1-40

1. Law and Race
   In Chapter 4, Calavita discusses how law has helped to construct (historically and currently) “categories of race and their meanings” (page 63). Pick at least THREE of these readings to discuss the role of legal actors, law and legal processes in defining or reifying meanings of race. Make sure to discuss the implications, not just for the people (e.g., defendants or litigants) going through the justice system, but also for American society in general regarding race relations, racial inequality, and/or racism.

• Eberhardt, Jennifer, Goff, Phillip, Purdie, Valerie, and Paul Davies. 2004. “Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87: 876 – 893
• Frohmann, Lisa. 1997. “Convictability and Discordant Locales: Reproducing Race, Class, & Gender Ideology in Prosecutorial Decisionmaking.” Law & Society Review 31:531-55.
• Selections from Gonzalez Van Cleve, Nicole. 2016. Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court
• Calavita, Kitty. 2000. “The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity, and “Passing”: Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882-1910.” Law & Social Inquiry 25 (1): 1-40

Sample Solution