Legal Attitudes and Legitimacy: Extending the Integrated Legal Socialization Model

Abstract

Legal socialization is the process by which individuals acquire beliefs about rules and rule-violation by internalizing codified, normative rules within society. In the integrated legal socialization model, legal attitudes are mediators between legal/moral reasoning and rule-violating behavior (RVB; Cohn, Bucolo, Rebellon, & Van Gundy, 2010). In the alternative legal socialization model, legitimacy of authority is a predictor of RVB (Piquero, Fagan, Mulvey, Steinberg, & Odgers, 2005). In the current study, we attempted to replicate Cohn et al.'s (2010) integrated model. A path model revealed that legal attitudes (normative status) mediated the relationship between legal reasoning and RVB in partial support of the integrated model. We then expanded the theoretical model by arguing that police and parental legitimacy mediated between moral/legal reasoning and normative status (approval of RVB). We used longitudinal data from middle school and high school students to test our expanded theoretical model. Our final path analysis revealed partial support for our expanded model by demonstrating that legal (but not moral) reasoning was associated with both parental and police legitimacy—which were associated with RVB via the mediating influence of legal reasoning (normative status). We conclude by discussing the policy implications of the expanded legal socialization model as well as our suggestions for future research.

Keywords:

• attitudes
• legitimacy
• adolescents
• rule-violating behavior
• moral reasoning
• legal reasoning

Acknowledgments

This research was facilitated by two grants from the National Science Foundation (SES0550145 and SES1026803). We thank numerous individuals for assistance in preparing this research. The following individuals read drafts of this paper: Kevin Anderson, Laura Jarvis, and Stacy Jeleniewski. The following graduate assistants helped coordinate the data collection, entry, and preparation: Jessie French and Donald Bucolo. The following students helped with the data collection and/or data entry: Melissa Curtin, Danielle DiFranco, Steven Falk, Hanah Fleahman, Jason Frazier, Jessie French, Jaime Gallagher, Robyn Hackler, Marissa Hill, Kevin Hornberger, Jessica Lucier, Edward MacDonald, Kate McClain, Devon Mahler, Brianna Murdock, Michele Poirier, Kaitlin Rezendez, Meredith Richards, Lauren Scott, and Kristin Williams.

Notes

1. Average grades were correlated with SES (r = .37, p < .001), sex (r = −.14, p < .01), legal reasoning (r = .25, p < .001), and moral reasoning (r = .15, p < .01). Legal reasoning was also correlated with sex (r = −.14, p < .05), age (r = −.12, p < .05), and moral reasoning (r = .51, p < .001). Finally, sex and moral reasoning were correlated (r = −.31, p < .001).