About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

38 Clev. St. L. Rev. 517 (1990)
The Concept of the Self in Legal Culture

handle is hein.journals/clevslr38 and id is 525 raw text is: THE FORTY-FIFTH CLEVELAND-MARSHALL FUND LECTURE* THE CONCEPT OF THE SELF IN LEGAL CULTURE LAWRENCE M. FRIEDMAN** I. INTRODUCTION .................................................. 517 II. INDIVIDUALISM, PAST AND PRESENT .......................... 518 III. THE CRIMINAL SELF: LAW AND PSYCHIATRY ................. 521 IV. FAMILY LAW ..................................................... 531 V. A CONCLUDING W ORD .......................................... 534 I. INTRODUCTION This essay is an exploration in the domain of legal culture, or, in other words, an exploration of those social ideas and concepts that shape and underpin the law.' Specifically, it is about the concept of the individual, or the self, and how this concept makes its mark on the legal order. Human beings are social, cultural animals; they live in communities tied together with normative bonds. Cultures have histories, traditions, habits, structures, and ways of looking at the world. In each culture, no doubt, there is a concept of the self, and each culture is governed by assumptions about the relationship of the individual to other individuals, and to society at large. In any complex society there are many such concepts, just as there are many separate legal cultures. Nonetheless, it is possible to generalize and aggregate. Societies have structures, they have personalities, they have ways of life. Not everybody in America conforms to the standard American patterns (whatever these turn out to be); but on balance people do, certainly as compared to ancient Egypt or for that matter modern France. Not all societies, past and present, have been individualistic in the sense that American society is. Older societies, and their legal systems, tended to locate important rights and duties not in individuals but in groups, classes, families, or clans. Ancient and traditional societies, on the whole, subordinated individual rights to the rights of larger collec- * This essay is based on the address given at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, September, 1989, which was the Forty-Fifth Cleveland-Marshall Fund Lec- ture. ** Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law, Stanford University. ' Legal culture means simply the ideas, values, opinions, and attitudes of some population with regard to law and legal systems. It is worth distinguishing be- tween an external and an internal legal culture. The external legal culture is the legal culture of the general population; the internal legal culture is the legal culture of insiders-lawyers, jurists, judges, law professors. See L. FRIEDMAN, THE LEGAL SYSTEM: A SOCIAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE 223-24 (1975).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most