Chapter Summary: 'Before The Law And' Against The Law

The authors’ book uses the interviewees’ stories to explore and explain their views of how as people think about the law. They boiled these views into three attitudes called “Before the Law”, “With the Law”, and “Against the Law”. The chapters used several legal terms to further explain these attitudes and several another core concepts to explain their points. To gain a better understanding behind the authors’ reasoning and research, we need to explore and define these terms. One of the most important terms to understand is legal consciousness as the term is use by the authors to organize legal consciousness into three categories known as “Before the law,” “With the Law,” and “Against the Law.” This refers to an individual understanding of

These are terms are known as the four dimensions of legal consciousness. The first dimension is known as normativity. Normativity describes how normal individuals and legal actors act within the legal system. Normativity also gives us a general understand on an individual’s attitudes towards the law, legal system, and the organizations supported by the law. The next dimension is known as constraint. Constraint is the limits of the law. Constraint shows the weakness of the laws and how law is prevented from being all powerful. The third dimension is capacity. Capacity is an individual’s understanding of law, legality and the legal system. This is the most important aspect of the four dimensions of legal consciousness as it shows how an individual will act when dealing with the law. An individual with strong understanding of the law, legality and the legal system can use their skills, resources, and experiences to gain advantages when dealing with law. Finally, the last dimension is known as time and space. This how legality is explained through physical material and how time is used by legality. Each attitudes view space similar as it affects their daily lives but time is different for each of them. For example, in “Before the Law”, individuals with this attitude view the law as a separate entity from their daily

There is some overlap between these attitudes like how both “With the Law” and “Against the Law” will use what resources and skills they possess to manipulate the law in their favor if possible. These attitudes are usually in strong contrast with to each other. For example, “Before the Law” and “Against the Law” view on normativity are the opposite as individuals with the “Before the Law” attitudes consider the law to impartial and objective while individuals with the “Against the Law” attitudes believe in “might make