Law Meets Society

        Calavita defines several legal terms that relate to law and how society views them. One of these terms is “CSI Effect” which has had a huge impact on police and prosecutors when going to trial. In the chapter Calavita describes “CSI-educated juries” which is where a juror may consider themselves educated in forensics based off of things seen on the television series (32). Real life forensics are not that sophisticated. For example, there is no magic machine where a fingerprint is scanned and immediately the computer finds a match. The process of identifying a fingerprint starts with identifying characteristics of a fingerprint such as loops swirls etc., then they are upload and they typically get a list of possible matches to that print. Then further examination takes place and it is by no means fast. I chose this because while studying at the National Forensic Academy we were told because of CSI, there are guilty subjects who avoid prosecution because of this phenomenon.  

        Another term is “weapons of the weak” termed this by James Scott (1985). Calavita writes “originally this was about resistance among peasants in a Malaysian village” but now is extended to “daily acts of retaliation and sabotage like a waiter spitting in a disrespectful customer’s soup” (39). These acts are carried out as “vindication for lack of power, low socioeconomic status, or low position to exact satisfaction for the wrongs done them, or simply rescue their dignity” (39). I chose this term because many times I have heard disgruntled workers complaining about customers when in the kitchen. I often wonder if these employees realize how loud they are and if management does anything about this if they hear of this. At the same time many of these workers are severely underpaid and in some cases bad tippers/customers can cause a waiter/waitress to have to pay the business.

        Calavita also writes about how many topics are socially constructed and not natural realities, such as race, gender, sexual identification etc. For example, “the ability of law to create social realities that appear natural by inventing many of the concepts and categories we think with, means that it insinuates itself invisibly into our everyday worlds and wields extraordinary power” (37). Such as words of reason in a courtroom are typically silenced and overrun by “technical legal language” which creates a “powerless language” that “reflects and reinforces their subordinate position in society” (37). I chose this topic because many in society are clueless to the fact many of the hard hitting issues of today are socially constructed falsehoods.