Sociology of Law

Wallace-Wells, B., & Magnuson, E. 2007. "How America Lost the War on Drugs." Rolling Stone (1041): 90-119. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Stohr, M. (2008) Women and the Law. Walsh, A. And Hemmonds, C. (Eds.) Law, Justice, and Society. A Sociological Introduction (269-291). Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

On the surface the subjects of these readings are very different. Wallace-Well and Magnuson provide a detailed history and account of United States policy towards the enforcement of drug control policy. The reading in Law, Justice, and Society gave a brief summary of women's rights and representation in American law. Both subjects are highly contentious and highly important, and but most importantly, both mention the legal discrimination against marginalized groups. The Rolling Stone article discusses, among other subjects, the disproportionate negative effect the war on drugs had an against minority communities. The reading from Law, Justice, and Society gave an account of the law's disproportionate bias against women in past and present legal climates.

Wallace-Wells and Magnuson document the failure of the United States government to fight the market for illegal drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines. Wallace-wells and Magnuson discuss two tangential failures: the failure of the militaristic fight against drug production overseas, and the failure to prevent people from trying drugs in the United States. Both efforts, in the view of the authors, are highly misguided. The efforts to stop drugs at the source of production ultimately fail because drug cultivators and traffickers simply find new and innovative ways to fill a demand that already exists. Anti-drug "prevention" efforts in the United States are highly flawed because they heavily rely on the theory of the "gateway drug," which has already been discounted, and they also rely heavily on advertising which (as anyone under 30 can probably tell you) is cheesy and not taken seriously by those whom it is intended to impact. The efforts that have made a difference in the drug war are community-based policing as well as the focus on rehabilitation rather than incarceration. Unfortunately, the most recent Drug Czars, up to when the article was written did not understand or accept this approach (except, according to the authors, Lee Brown, who understood how to fight drugs, but did not understand how to communicate those ideas politcally.

The reading "Women and the Law" from Law, Justice, and Society gives a very basic introduction to the political and legal rights of American women, including a discussion of whether women should be treated differently under the law due to biological differences, a legal history of women's right and women's suffrage, and an analysis of feminist legal theory. The general thesis of the chapter is that both legally and culturally woman have been considered less valuable than men (or the property of men), which is not a shocking conclusion for one to come to, given current struggles for women's rights.