This dynamic is so common among marginalized populations. Legal pursuits are themselves are barriers to entry. Most of the time, despite rightful protections, there is a distinct level of discomfort with pursuing this. While the article mentioned this prior, one element they provide to mention is the lack of social and financial capital that marginalized communities face when even thinking of pursuing legal action.

I wonder if this can be applied to the idea of citizenship. I think one of the points of "legal consciousness" in this context is that our identities form from what available options the law can provide at times.

I'm making note of this as it connects to week 1's Durkheim reading on morality and his conditions for what constitutes morality in a society. This piece adds a different dimension to morality within the legal sphere in particular. One of the main points of Durkheim is that it is impossible to have a "objective" morality until someone like God comes down and specifically enumerates that. Here, though, the Evangelical movement is operating under an objective morality, but doesn't really understand that this is inherently subjective regardless.

Interestingly enough, abortion politics found a similar path to the road toward Brown v Board. The extension of Brown ended up providing the catalyst to extend the idea of desegregation from being solely in the public domain, to even the private one. Here, the push on abortion politics through "rights" talk can even be applied elsewhere.

I think this point is important: for much of the "rights" talk on the right side of the aisle; what it has really done is used the veil of "rights" as a virtue to push a specific and subjective "moral" agenda that normally wouldn't be able to find success otherwise.

This reminds me of an article I read in one of my other Legal Studies courses titled "Roe Rage" -- and the notion of democratic constitutionalism. Within this realm of thought, it has been noted that an adoption of what people considered to be enumerated rights in the constitution by groups of people (in this case, conservative enclaves) have been used to provide the backlash for their own movement.

It's fascinating to connect this to our Durkheim reading. If a patriarchal model that encompasses some races and genders as subservient, then couldn't one argue that the moral collective (as dominated by a white-male hierarchy) is inherently patriarchal as homogenous as well? This is particularly interested because in an organic solidarity model there should be some sort of heterogeneity in terms of moral consciousness, but despite an evolving modern-day world, it seems that custom and tradition has roots that may override the organic solidarity model at times and even taking a step backward to a moral consciousness under a mechanical solidarity model.

I really appreciated this part because this is what I was getting out of the whole piece. Rights in the pay equity movement was more than just for pay, it was about raising social issues within a context that a patriarchal society understood -- rights. I think this perfectly framed what really undergirded the whole movement.

I'm finding myself mulling over the meaning of this piece here given the mainstream view of laws and justice in modern society. The layman's view of justice generally is individually centered. Punishment and punitiveness tend to come from a fear of "what could happen to me" or "I wouldn't like that if it were done to me." So criminality, or deviance (although Durkheim doesn't use those words) could be the result of an act devoid of regard for collective morality.

What Durkheim posits here is that restitution is more effective in solidarity (than what I assume to be repression) because we return to the status quo and this is not entirely about the individual. The return to the the accepted norms of what we consider to be just and moral by society's standard is simply more attractive, in Durkheim's view, because it reinforces what the collective has considered to be virtuous or "right" and not so much about what the individual thinks as such.

Given this approach to law and how it reinforces social cohesion, I still can't help but wonder how arbitrary law really is, and who it benefits. Despite Durkheim's views on a collective moral conscience, history makes me feel inclined to argue that a specific type of moral consciousness is what has been elevated, and only relates to a few groups of people, and not all.

This is particularly interesting; Durkheim is saying that in an Organic Solidarity model, the judgements shift from being solely focused on repression (as they were in a Mechanical Solidarity model), and focus on returning to normal. I wonder if collective morality is our base-line to return to when a transgression is done, and moreover, how does law tend to "otherize" people given the purview of what collective morality (and subsequently how law is reflected) is.

This sort of reminds me of Durkheim's views on morality, and to a degree Silver's. Parties come together with inherent values which provide the basis of laws as guardrails. It's curious to see this work out in contract law, though.

This is particularly fascinating, and I think this is indicative of a more Organic Solidarity model as opposed to a Mechanical one according to Durkheim. For instance, in a Mechanical solidarity model, there is high value in repressive (or retributive) laws, but in an Organic solidarity model, there is more focus on Restitutive. The fact that the go-to isn't retribution, or at the very least, isn't the goal, then that alone is a huge indicator that the collective morality of society values the status quo in an Organic model sort of way.

I realized that I started doing this for myself to summarize the main takeaways on my own personal annotations. As I was doing this, I figured I might as well share to help everyone understand the key takeaways as well. I hope it helps!

Some key takeaways:

1) The study is about the importance between distinguishing offender and victim centered punitiveness

2) Different moral foundations (which vary greatly across culture/ethnicity/religion/etc, will constitute a punitive attitude.

3) Scholar Paul Robinson argues that the common punitive preferences (which are based in moral intuition) provide the basis for criminal law, but it is essential in doing so, but that lawmakers should re-check the morality of criminal code.

4) Other scholars argue that moral institutions do not favor those who are viewed as out-group members, and thus we must overcome our moral intuitions and enact policy out of rationality, not emotion.

5) The study is not one on what type of punitiveness should be adopted, but rather to just analyze the sentiments.

6) Geography matters -- Purity was highly valued in the political and religious conservative parts of the US. There is more evidence to suggest that these microcosms (across the US), have a different valuation of moral intuitions and thus shape their views on punitiveness.

7) Crime and punishment is also shaped for political gains because the endorsement of certain morals may be popular to garner clout.

There's obviously more, but that's a lot to cover. Again, I hope this brief summary helped!

This seems staunchly more like Mechanical solidarity here. There is implicit homogeneity in this piece here, and I would argue that this would reflect in a more repressive response to an "offense" simply due to the shared values of what is considered egregious.

I find this extremely interesting given the current state of affairs in the United States. It's fascinating to see that the sentiment of rebellion (against the British Crown) that initiated the United States is now the very same notion that is looked down upon. I don't want to digress too much, but this is something that immediately clicked in my head.

The transition, or "overriding" in this case, is starkly reminiscent of the transition from Mechanical Solidarity to an Organic one. I pose this because I wonder if this directly relates to Durkheim's view on "custom" in the formation of morality.