The relationship between the law and society affects everyone and everything. How the law is written and how it is acted upon in society are two different things. It is imperative, therefore, that we as citizens pay attention to and understand the importance of the relationship between the law and society as it affects both our own lives and the lives of those around us. We engage in and witness the power of the law and society everyday. The law is personal, however, the law is also discretionary depending on where you look. Furthermore, from two scholarly perspectives, authors Richard Rothstein and Kitty Calavita, we can deepen our engagement with this relationship in their books, The Color of Law and Invitation to Law and Society, An Introduction …show more content…
Calavita’s sociological approach works to further interpret Rothstein’s concepts for how social understanding becomes law or close to it. The author’s first concept, how the law is both everyday and everywhere, enforces the spectrum of influence that the law has on the workings of society. Calavita explains, “It is this everyday nature of law-its ability to influence our most mundane activities and even to determine what those activities are-that makes it such a powerful resource for those who would shape the socioeconomic order to their advantage” (Calavita, 42). Additionally, similar to Rothstein’s argument, Calavita articulates “the color of law” as historical changes in the definition of what it meant to be a citizen in the United States were based on the color of your …show more content…
The relationship between society and the law is direct, and housing in America is a conclusive example of that. As argued by both authors, once society has made up its mind about a certain group of people or place such as the ghettos, even the law can’t change those facts. It often happens that people of color and minorities get overlooked and stereotyped into something that they are not due to the hierarchical and discriminatory principles of the law. It has been engrained into society to think that minorities are poor, lazy, and overall less productive in the public
The purpose of “Law in America” is to further explain why the law is so impactful on every individual in the United States, the following summary will look at the
The idea of equality for all people, regardless of their race, is instilled in the American society of today. Unfortunately, this idea has not always been present, which ultimately has caused many issues for America’s society in the past. As discussed in the book Our Town: Race, Housing, and the Soul of Suburbia, David L. Kirp focuses on the inequality that was found between the low-income blacks and the middle class whites in a South Jersey town, Mount Laurel. At the time, the whites had a goal of running the blacks out of the town by making the costs of housing expensive enough where blacks could not afford it. This lead to unequal treatment for the blacks who lived in Mount Laurel compared to the whites when it came to housing opportunities.
This book is a guide for applying psychological concepts, theories, findings and methods to its study. Laws are something that cannot be avoided. Laws matter from the minute you are born to you death. In the book it states that laws regulate our private lives and public actions. Laws dictate how long we must stay in school, how fast we can drive, when (and, to some extent, whom) we can marry, and whether we are allowed to play our car stereos at full blast or let our boisterous dog romp through the neighbors’ yards and gardens.
The book uses specific examples to show that the pricing of the units and lack of resources available to those of the lower class furthers inequality; the pricing and lack of resources results in a staggering amount of evictions that take place because these people are unable to keep up with the price of a place to live when there is no financial help available to them, which is not the case with the upper class, who have approximately the same or slightly higher rent, but way more means to gain money to pay that rent, thus resulting in the upper class tenants having fewer evictions on their record. The book also demonstrates how the formal eviction process makes it impossible for the lower class to create for themselves a fresh start because of the inclusion of docketed judgments that come back to haunt the previously evicted tenants at times when all is going well for them. Through these two aspects of forced evictions and never ending sanctions for obtaining an eviction, inequality is maintained and perpetuated for the lower class
The Jail and The New Jim Crow both describe how our justice system is generally based on people’s conceptions of things, and how our own justice system is creating a new way of discriminating people by labeling, incarcerating the same disreputables and lower class that have come to be labeled as the rabble class. In chapter two, of The New Jim Crow, supporting the claim that our justice system has created a new way of segregating people; Michelle Alexander describes how the process of mass incarceration actually works and how at the end the people that we usually find being arrested, sent to jail, and later on sent to prison, are the same low class persons’ with no knowledge and resources. These people commit petty crimes that cost them their
Perpetuation of issues such as these in the law can be changed with research and the implementation of new policies that serve to address the underlying causes of these issues, which is racial inequality and the continued oppression of people of color in the United States. I plan to research the psychology of oppression and its effects on government and society in graduate school, and work to combat these effects as a clinical psychologist and community change agent. The overall structure of oppression, which has made itself known as I investigate the root causes of more common social issues such as mass incarceration and food deserts, is created and perpetuated through government and public policy, regardless of the emergence of national social awareness of issues such as inequality, economic disparity, and social injustice. I believe that inequality can be changed one step-or one policy-at a time, and I plan to help with this as I examine the different forms of oppression on people of color at both a national and international level and work to lessen its force. Through non-government organizations such as the Marshall Project or the American Civil Liberties Union, I wish to add my knowledge of social science to the ongoing effort for equal civil rights for all citizens.
The review of The Politics of Staying Put by Carolyn Gallaher, read, "The Politics of Staying Put is Gallaher’s effort to understand the law’s role in advancing social justice and a personal account of how she moved from being a beneficiary of such legislation to a critic of its uneven impact.... Though the Washington experience is unique, Gallaher’s ability to place it within the larger debate over the proper balance between government intervention and reliance on market forces thrusts her study into a broader policy framework. As such, The Politics of Staying Put should resonate widely for urban studies scholars." The review of The Mutual Housing Experiment, by Kristin Szylvian read, "Professor Szylvian is to be congratulated for presenting
In her essay, she points that an individual should not be tagged as a criminal to the society due to his or her poverty. She also points that the government should provide more shelters to homeless, and that the government should help them to find a job in order to have them enrolled back in society. Unfortunately, the public housing, which is a support for poor families provided by the government, has been becoming an easy target for law enforcers to fine people that is in need. As Ehrenreich says, “The public housing that remains has become more prisonlike, with residents subjected to drug testing and random police sweeps”. It demonstrates the elephant in the room that the government wants to avoid such reality meanwhile people is suffering in public houses filled of diseases and filth.
Lance Freeman, an associate professor of urban planning in Columbia, wanted to investigate if there was any displacement going on in two predominantly black neighborhoods that was briskly gentrifying. Much to his dismay, he couldn’t find any correlation between gentrification and displacement. What was surprising to Freeman was his discovery, “poor residents and those without a college education were actually less likely to move if they resided in gentrifying neighborhoods”. (Sternbergh, 19) Freeman adds, “The discourse on gentrification, has tended to overlook the possibility that some of the neighborhood changes associated with gentrification might be appreciated by the prior residents.” (Sternbergh, 19)
The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) introduced long-term mortgage and guaranteed to lenders with low interest rate and extended payment period. The number of Americans who could purchase homes increased and Jackson pointed out how the American way of life transformed, which is to buy a home than to rent. It is said that “today, renters account for one-third of all households, suburbs house far more people than cities, and affordability has supplanted physical deficiency as the primary housing problem (Schwartz 2015, 17).” However, the HOLC and FHA excluded the black population such that the HOLC appraisal and rating system assessed neighborhoods with black inhabitants to be hazardous and the FHA concerned about white-black separation in terms of the investment values (201, 208). FHA helped the building industry to turn against the minority and inner-city housing market and its policies supported the income and racial segregation of suburbia (213).
Housing wealth is disproportionate due to the fact the African American families parents and grandparents grew up in segregated areas where it was hard to gain any financial capital. According to the article in paragraph 5 Melvin Oliver claims that African
Public Policy on Housing Discrimination Executive Summary Housing discrimination and segregation have long been present in the American society (Lamb and Wilk). The ideals of public housing and home buying have always been intertwined with the social and political transformation of America, especially in terms of segregation and inequality of capital and race (Wyly, Ponder and Nettking). Nevertheless, the recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri and in Baltimore due to alleged police misconduct resulting to deaths of black men brought light on the impoverished conditions in urban counties in America (Lemons). This brings questions to the effectiveness of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in devising more fair-housing facilities (Jost).
Are we obligated to obey unjust laws? Laws are important because they are guidelines for a state. Without laws citizens would not know how to act and cause harm to others. Laws are aimed at common good and keep a society together and functioning.
The law is an intriguing concept, evolving from society’s originalities and moral perspectives. By participating in the legal system, we may endeavour to formulate a link between our own unique beliefs and the world in which we live. Evidently, a just sense of legality is a potent prerequisite for change, enabling society to continue its quest for universal equality and justice. Aristotle once stated that "even when laws have been written down, they ought not to remain unaltered".
Law is present in our daily life and in everything we do. We cannot think a second without law. Whatever we can see around us everything is connected with the law. Sometimes we can see it and sometimes we cannot see but feel it. Law is not just a thing to obey for yourself but making a peaceful society.