The Juvenile Court System: Social Action and Legal Change

ISBN-13: 9780202363400 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 256 str.

Edwin Lemert

Opis

This volume is based on a detailed analysis of change in the law and in the administration of justice affecting juvenile offenders in California in the fifties and sixties. It addresses how procedural law develops on a long-term basis and under what conditions. It also examines the processes by which revolutionary changes occur in law and the extent to which social change can be directed or controlled by legislation. Social action to revise California's juvenile court law, which had remained little changed since 1915, began in 1958. Subsequently a small group of legal reformers who per-ceived anomalies in the law and in the underlying philosophy of the court overcame substantial resistance to effect revolutionary revisions of the law. Lemert ex-amines their experience to determine how changes of such magnitude could take place after decades of gradual adaptations in the juvenile courts. His study also looks into the consequences of this change on the court and re-lated agencies of law enforcement. The author sets forth a socio-legal theory of change-a conception of paradigms, normal evolution, and revolution in law. He applies this theory to data, with special atten-tion to the resistance to legal change and the processes by which it gives way to the adaptive process of normal law. Lemert discusses the substantive aspects of juvenile law as it relates to human affect and meaning, touching on the existential elements of justice. Professionals dealing with juveniles, legal scholars, sociologists, and political scientists will find this book, with its emphasis on how to achieve more equitable administration of juvenile justice, has much to contribute to our understanding of the dynamics of social change.

Spis treści

Preface
Introduction
2. The First Revolution and Normal Law
3. The Transformation of Informal Justice
4. Anomalies, Issues and Social Action
5. Resistance and Communication of the Paradigm
6. Adaptations and Normal Law
7. The Logic of Revolution by Law
8. Postscript on Juvenile Justice
Index

O autorze

Edwin Lemert