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After the “Social Meaning Turn”: Implications for Research Design and Methods of Proof in Contemporary Criminal Law Policy Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Bernard E. Harcourt
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Abstract

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The social norm movement in criminal justice has received a lot of attention in academic and public policy circles. This essay critically examines social norm writings and explores some of the implications for methods of proof and research design in the social sciences. In the process, the essay offers an alternative theoretical approach. This alternative focuses on the multiple ways in which the social meaning of practices (such as juvenile gun possession, gang membership, or disorderly conduct) and the social meaning of policing techniques (such as juvenile snitching policies, youth curfews, or order-maintenance policing) may shape us as contemporary subjects of society. This alternative theoretical approach has its own important implications for methods of proof and research design, and the essay develops these implications into a four-prong research agenda.

Type
Symposium on Norms, Law, and Order in the City
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , 2000 , pp. 179 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Law and Society Association

Footnotes

I am grateful to Bruce Ackerman, Seyla Benhabib, Suzie Dovi, David Garland, Dan Kahan, Duncan Kennedy, Toni Massaro, Tracey Meares, Frank Michelman, Martha Minow, Stephen Morse, Ted Schneyer, Stephen Schulhofer, Carol Steiker, Dalia Tsuk, and Richard Tuck for insightful comments and criticisms, as well as to the participants at the 2000 Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. Special thanks to Susan Silbey.

Editor's comment: This paper was accepted through juried review for presentation at the Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum May 12–13, 2000.

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