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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
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Abstract

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

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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.

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