Social Stratification as a Main Theme in The Brothel Boy and Other Parables of the Law "Justice is your job, not mercy" This is a very strong statement coming from The Brothel Boy and Other Parables of the Law by Norval Morris. This sentence portrays a prominent theme in the decisions made in this book. Sent to Moulmein, Burma to act as a policeman, prosecutor, and judge, Eric Blair discovers that the law is not as clear-cut as it may seem. Constantly plagued by his moral and legal values, Eric Blair finds himself seeking the advice from the local doctor, Dr. Veraswami. Blair has a total of eight separate encounters in which he battles for the right answer. He soon finds out that there is not one right answer, but many different answers that could be right or wrong depending on the situation. Many sociological and socio-legal issues are seen throughout the book. My primary focus will be on social stratification and the role it plays with the legal issues and decisions. . The study of social stratification is the study of class, caste, privilege, and status that is characteristic of a particular society. It varies according to how society is organized especially in terms of production and work. This idea is a sociological issue that seems to prevail throughout Blair's encounters. There are many different group and individual statuses that made up the village of Moulmein, Burma. The English were ultimately the superior group because they governed Burma and because they were white. Each person among the English did have his or her own individual status as well. Blair for example had high status in the community because of his job. After the English came the Burmese villagers. Some of these people were more importa... ... middle of paper ... ...ok. In conclusion, "To strive for justice, one must be a person of principles. There is no single principle that one can use to achieve justice in the resolution of legal disputes." This is true because one must use a wide array of principles that come from moral and legal perspectives in order to gain a resolution. Unfortunately society has deemed it necessary to incorporate social stratification into some of these principles. The law tends to have more leniencies to those who have higher positions in society. With as many classes as our society today, it is impossible to find a jury of peers. Each person has their own idea of cultural norms, legal and moral principles, and a socio-class in which they belong to. Therefore, I contend that social stratification, whether it is between races, or economical levels, will always have some role in legal decisions.
Barker (2014, p.1) suggests that the law may be defined as a rule of human conduct, imposed upon and enforced among the members of society in which laws are inaugurated to ensure that social order continues. As a result, laws ensure that members of society may live and work together in an orderly manner by following the same rules. However, laws have different affects on individual members in society and from this point of view, this essay will focus on how laws in society affect individuals in minority and disadvantaged groups.
From the creation of the very first civilizations, people have been using laws for potential disputes and or other issues that they come across. With the evolution of time and the expansion of the legal system, many laws were established that did not promote justice and equality. In essence, they did not take into consideration the ethical and racial implications that these laws generated. In our days, laws of this nature are still in effect and are characterized as unjust. They can be found anywhere and can take various forms.
Wasserman, A., & Horwitz, A. (1980). Formal rationality, substantive justice and discrimination. Law and human behaviour, 103-115.
To look closely at many of the mechanisms in American society is to observe the contradiction between constitutional equality and equality in practice. Several of these contradictions exist in the realm of racial equality. For example, Black s often get dealt an unfair hand in the criminal justice system. In The Real War on Crime, Steven Donziger explains,
During this time in society the industry of prostitution was an economic gold mine. The women operate the brothel while very distinguished men in the community own and take care of the up keep. The brothel keepers are seen as nothing more than common home wrecking whores. However, the owners of the brothels are viewed as successful business men.
The criminal justice system is defined as the system of law that is used for apprehending, prosecuting, defending, and even sentencing people who are guilty of criminal offenses. In many cases, race, class, gender, and even sexuality can impact due process and fairness within the criminal justice system. Sometimes if people don’t think they have a choice to receive justice, they may want to take law into their own hands. Whereas Others will try to get a lawyer so they can take it to court and follow the judicial systems laws to try convict the criminal. In certain situations as a defendant, your race, class, and gender can make a negative impact on the criminal justice response to the crimes. In the movies “Thelma and Louise,” “The Accused,”
In A Theory of Justice John Rawls presents his argument for justice and inequality. Rawls theorizes that in the original position, a hypothetical state where people reason without bias, they would agree to live in a society based on two principles of justice (Rawls 1971, 4). These two principles of justice are named the first and second principles. The first is the equal rights and liberties principle. The second is a combination of the difference principle and the fair equality of opportunity principle, or FEOP (Rawls 1971, 53). Rawls argues that inequality will always be inevitable in any society (Rawls 1971, 7). For example, there will always be a varied distribution of social and economic advantages. Some people will be wealthier than others and some will hold places of greater importance in society. Rawls’s argument is that to ensure the stability of society the two principles of justice are needed to govern the assignment of rights and regulate the inequality (Rawls 1971, 53). Any infringement of an individuals rights or inequality outside the parameters of the principles of justice are unjust.
Discrimination against the minority population is a major problem in the United States society’s justice system. There are many examples where African American and low-income minorities are treated differently and not given the chance to prove their innocence. The law enforcement promises to treat all men or women equal opportunity, but the same system has put 120,000 innocent African Americans in prison. While most of them still remain in prisons, injustice by law enforcements is still a burden to the minorities in America. Moreover, wrongful conviction is a horrible injustice when a person spends years in jail. This is getting recognized by the U.S. system but often late. In many cases by the time a person is proven innocent, he or she might
It is no secret that the American legal system is distinct from other developed Western nations in its practices and laws. This variation, termed “adversarial legalism” by Professor Robert Kagan in his book, Adversarial Legalism, has two salient features: formal legal contestation and litigant activism. In civil and criminal law, jury trials and a specific lawyering culture exemplify these traits. Though adversarial legalism responds well to the American desires of justice and protection from harm while simultaneously respecting the societal fear of a government with too much power, it leads to extremely costly litigation and immense legal uncertainty. To reconcile the American view of justice and the undesirable outcomes of formal contestation and litigant activism, the legal system has gone so far as to reform large parts of the system, including bureaucratic regulations and the plea bargaining process. However, as Kagan states, rather than reduce the costliness or uncertainty of the legal process, these procedural changes have merely lead to an increase in litigation and, therefore, an increase of adversarial legalism in criminal and civil law.
In his book on ?The Behavior of Law? Donald Black attempts to describe and explain the conduct of law as a social phenomenon. His theory of law does not consider the purpose, value, impact of law, neither proposes any kind of solutions, guidance or judgment; it plainly ponders on the behavior of law. The author grounds his theory purely on sociology and excludes the psychology of the individual from his assumptions on the behavior of law (Black 7). The theory of law comes to the same outcome as other theories scrutinizing the legal environment, such as deprivation theory or criminal theory; however, the former concentrates on the patterns of behavior of law, not involving the motivation of an individual as such. In this respect, Black?s theory is blind for social life, which is beyond the behavior of law.
To this end, there is dire need to reform the justice system to curb the preference of discrimination as well as disparity (Mathis, 2007). The two would lead to great injustices as the victims of both would end up meeting justice in an unfair manner.
John Rawls’ Justice as fairness attempts to both define the principles typical of justice and describe what a just society would necessary entail by the conception presented. What is described is not a perfectly good society, as justice is but one virtue among many, but a just one. Specifically, Rawls’ conception is that justice and fairness are one in the same. Using this as a starting point, Rawls focuses foremostly on the practices in a society, rather than any individual action. In this way, he expounds on what is meant by the term fairness and what value that term has in explaining justice. In this paper of three parts, I will first describe Rawls position on justice, including this position’s main principles. Secondly, I will examine
According to Aristotle, distributive justice incorporates the allocation of resources amongst society(Aristotle, trans W.d Ross, 1994). These resources can include education, profession, honor, status, money, or property (Pollsky, 2012, p. 54). There are a variety of theories that describe various methods of carrying out distributive justice including ideas of need, merit, and entitlement. These ideas work in order to bring the goal of justice which is equality and fairness within society. However, the reason that this is not the most important form of justice is that it is too narrow in scope.
Rawl’s principles were found justified by visualizing real people forming a system of laws including the ramifications of a “justified complaint”. A justified complaint is an accusation by a member of society against another member of society. To have a system of justice the society must have means of answering the beckoning of the populace. If a society does not attend to the offense of its own people then it is not a true society. Society is based on the principle of a consensus unanimously choosing their governing rules and laws. However the limitations of a “justified complaint” are unclear depending on what the consensus agrees to. Though the one rule that must apply is the fact that a complaint must be made by a law abider to be a “justified complaint”.
Pugh, C.L. (2013) 'Is Citizenship the Answer? Constructions of belonging and exclusion for the stateless Rohingya of Burma.', p. 3.