NCJ Number
130674
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 15 Issue: 2 Dated: special issue (April 1991) Pages: 183-204
Date Published
1991
Length
22 pages
Annotation
U.S. Supreme Court decisions, or constitutional law, represent this society's symbolic legality, its ideological core of values and beliefs about law and justice in a democracy. The due process and equal protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment are central to American symbolic legality, yet they are vague and undefined and create great tension in the symbolic legality.
Abstract
This author argues that fourteenth amendment jurisprudence ignores the realities of the contemporary social context and offers ineffective due process protections in lieu of meaningful equal protection remedies. The case of McCleskey v. Kemp in which the discriminatory imposition of the death penalty was described is used to buttress his argument. The tension inherent in Supreme Court decisions as a result of this conflict between ideology and reality has been increased by the modern psychological perspective on behavior which emphasizes the effects of structure, context, and situation and by social scientific research methods and measurement techniques that document the effects of structural inequality. 15 notes and 68 references (Author abstract modified)