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83 Tex L. Rev. 1399 (2004-2005)
Flouting the Law

handle is hein.journals/tlr83 and id is 1417 raw text is: Flouting the Law Janice Nadler* What happens when a person's commonsense view of justice diverges from the sense ofjustice he or she sees enshrined in particular laws? Does the perception of one particular law as unjust make an individual less likely to comply with unrelated laws? This Article advances the Flouting Thesis-the idea that the perceived legitimacy of one law or legal outcome can influence one s willingness to comply with unrelated laws-and provides original experimental evidence to support this thesis. The results suggest that willingness to disobey the law can extend far beyond the particular unjust law in question, to willingness to flout unrelated laws commonly encountered in everyday life (such as traffic violations, petty theft, and copyright restrictions), as well as willingness of mock jurors to engage in juror nullification. Finally, this Article explores the relation- ship between perceived injustice and flouting and offers several possible explanations, including the role of law in American popular culture and the expressive function of the law in producing compliance. I. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1400 1I. Theories of Legal Compliance and Perceived Injustice ............................................. 1403 III. Experimental Evidence for the Flouting Thesis ......................................................... 1407 A. Background: Related Theories and Evidence ................................................... 1407 B. Experiment 1: Testing the Flouting Thesis via Intentions to Comply ............... 1410 C. Experiment 2a: Testing the Flouting Thesis via Mock Juror Behavior (Student Sam ple) .............................................................................................. 14 16 D. Experiment 2b: Testing the Flouting Thesis via Mock Juror Behavior (Com m unity Sam ple) ....................................................................................... 1423 IV. Perceived Injustice in the Law and Its Consequences ................................................ 1426 A. The Influence of Popular Culture on Attention to Perceived Legal Injustice ... 1427 B. Expressive Law, Perceived Injustice, and Compliance .................................... 1429 V . Im plications and Prescriptions ................................................................................... 1432 A . Sources of Perceived Injustice .......................................................................... 1432 B. Reducing the Gap Between Legal Rules and Commonsense Justice ................ 1434 C. Caveats and Unanswered Questions ................................................................. 1438 V I. C onclusion ................................................................................................................. 1439 * Associate Professor, Northwestern University School of Law, jnadler@northwestem.edu; Research Fellow, American Bar Foundation. I am grateful to Kenworthey Bilz, Rick Brooks, Dov Cohen, Jim Davis, Shari Diamond, Richard Farr, Andrianna Kastanek, Russell Korobkin, Brook Long, Richard McAdams, Tom Miles, Mary Rose, and Leigh Thompson for helpful comments. Amanda Dykema-Engblade, Marcia Ireland, and Jennifer Mo provided excellent research assistance. I thank workshop participants at the American Bar Foundation, Colorado, Cornell, Illinois, Missouri, Northwestern, Northwestern Zodiac, Stanford, Texas, UCLA, and Wayne State for helpful comments on an early draft. I thank the American Bar Foundation for its financial support.

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