Changes in Legal Socialization over Time

Abstract

Our descriptive model of legal socialization includes three kinds of variables: legal reasoning, attitudinal factors rooted in particular situations, and behaviors. Our first empirical task is to describe these variables within our sample populations and show whether and how they changed during the socializing period. In this chapter we present a descriptive mapping of the socialization process, showing how legal development level, normative status of the behaviors, enforcement status of the rules, and frequency of rule-violating behaviors changed between the beginning and the end of the academic year. Possible relationships among the variables as they change, including our test of the competing hypotheses, are discussed in later chapters. Here we report data from two socialization designs: the first, which reflects natural socialization, follows a sample population of entering freshmen to the end of their first academic year; the second is an experimental design in which we manipulated the rule-enforcing environment for a representative population in four resident halls.