NCJ Number
70737
Date Published
1979
Length
37 pages
Annotation
The philosophical relationship of public opinion to the structure of government and criminal law is explored.
Abstract
Public opinion is defined as an organized construction which reflects practices of the state and the ideology that gives it legitimacy. This phenomenon is not to be confused with convictions of the population as a whole. Rather, public opinion represents a loose collection of apparent views used in the political arena. On one hand, essential states (i.e., communist countries) subscribe to the view that the state is always right and represents the absolute will of the people. On the other hand, phenomenalist states (i.e., western industrial states, represented here by Great Britain) accept the validity of diverse opinions among different social groups and believe that public opinion is combative, subject to interpretation, and fluid. In phenomenalist states the government must pay attention to the real popular will in order to achieve legitimacy. But in the West, 'public' opinion is structured by particular methods of interpretation which are determined by the governing circle of individuals responsible for this circle, but without ethnographic research about the nature of actual public opinion, no systematic alternative argumentation can be developed. Presently, the validity of administrators' principles of interpretation for the social structures is accepted. As a result, the governing circle can gloss over troublesome areas of crime and criminal legislation by avoiding unpopular measures and by reducing social control to technical matters to be resolved by experts. Footnotes are supplied.--in French.