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Justice Excused: The Deployment of Law in Everyday Political Encounters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

George I. Lovell
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Abstract

This paper examines the use of legal claims by government officials and citizens in everyday political encounters involving civil rights. Data come from 580 letters sent to the federal government between 1939 and 1941, and from the replies sent by the newly formed Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department. In almost every case, the department refused to intervene and explained its refusal by making legal claims about federal jurisdiction. These legal claims masked the department's discretionary choices and thus helped depoliticize the encounters. Surprisingly, however, a substantial number of letter writers challenged the government's legal claims by deploying their own legal and moral arguments. The willingness of these citizens to challenge official legal pronouncements cautions against making broad generalizations about the capacity of ordinary people to respond effectively when government officials deploy legal rhetoric.

Type
Administrative Officials Apply the Law: Two Historical Examples
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 2006 , pp. 283 - 324
Copyright
© 2006 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank the many people whose comments on earlier versions have helped improve this article, particularly Michael McCann, Herbert Kritzer, Jeannine Bell, Gad Barzilai, Stuart Scheingold, Naomi Murakawa, Rose Ernst, Scott Lemieux, Ken Kersch, Mark Graber, Mike Lovell, Hanes Walton Jr., several anonymous referees, and the members of the Workshare Group of the Comparative Law and Society Studies Center at the University of Washington. Thanks also to Rose Ernst, Devin Joshi, and Chris Roberts for research assistance, the desk staff at the National Archives, and everybody at Victrola.

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