This article argues for a turn toward social and cognitive psychology in one prominent area of sociolegal studies. Over roughly the past two decades, sociolegal scholars have become increasingly interested in the intersection between law and social identity. In a number of different contexts (disability, indigenous cultural groups, colonialism, race, gender, citizenship, and many others), law has been described as constitutive of social life, culture, and identity. Yet there remains within sociolegal scholarship only the most limited sense of how, why, and to what extent legal institutions constitute social and cultural identity.This gulf in the literature is primarily the result of disciplinary boundaries: Where the influence of law on social identity has been almost exclusively the province of sociolegal studies, the social cognitive mechanisms that give rise to social identity have been studied most extensively within the fields of cultural sociology and social and cognitive psychology. A turn toward these areas of research reveals that law and legal institutions are capable of constituting aspects of human social identity when the investitive criteria that serve as the bases for legal categorization reflect socially salient characteristics.This article further explores the sources of social salience, contending that legal investitive criteria become socially salient in virtue of physical differences, power relations, cultural differences, and deep history. Finally, law's role as an agent of socialization is placed in context, locating law within an array of socially constitutive institutions, including educational institutions, the media, and the family.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book invites the legal and psychology communities to work together in solving some of our most pressing social problems. It examines four controversial areas involving people’s perceptions of others. The book is therefore a guide to understanding the valuable contribution of social scientific research in policy formulation in the law, and it addresses the role of psychology in substantive law and legal decision making.

Social Identity and the Law: Race, Sexuality and Intersectionality is an important resource for inquiry into the relationship between law and social identity in the contexts of race, sexuality and intersectionality in the United States. The book provides a systematic legal treatment of selected historical and contemporary civil rights and social justice issues in areas affecting African Americans, Latinos/as, Asian Americans and LGBTQ persons from a law and politics perspective. It covers topics such as the legal and social construction of social identity, slavery and the rise of Jim Crow, discrimination based on national origin and citizenship, educational equity, voting rights, workplace discrimination, discrimination in private and public spaces, regulation of intimate relationships, marriage and reproductive justice, and criminal justice. Lecturers will benefit from: Fifty-seven excerpted cases accompanied with engaging questions presented at the beginning of each case to stimulate class discussion. An eResource including 129 supplemental case excerpts and case briefs for all excerpted cases appearing in the book. Suggested reading lists at the end of each chapter recommending key articles and books to help students survey the academic literature on the topics. With a logical chapter structure and accessible writing style, this textbook is an essential companion for use on undergraduate courses on American constitutional law, civil liberties and civil rights, social justice, and race and law.

This book is an examination of how the law understands human identity and the whole notion of ‘human being’. On these two notions the law, usually unconsciously, builds the superstructure of ‘human rights’. It explores how the law understands the concept of a human being, and hence a person who is entitled to human rights. This involves a discussion of the legal treatment of those of so-called "marginal personhood" (e.g. high functioning non-human animals; humans of limited intellectual capacity, and fetuses). It also considers how we understand our identity as people, and hence how we fall into different legal categories: such as gender, religion and so on.The law makes a number of huge assumptions about some fundamental issues of human identity and authenticity – for instance that we can talk meaningfully about the entity that we call ‘our self’. Until now it has rarely, if ever, identified those assumptions, let alone interrogated them. This failure has led to the law being philosophically dubious and sometimes demonstrably unfit for purpose. Its failure is increasingly hard to cover up. What should happen legally, for instance, when a disease such as dementia eliminates or radically transforms all the characteristics that most people regard as foundational to the ‘self’? This book seeks to plug these gaps in the literature.

What rights can individuals claim by virtue of membership in historically oppressed groups? How do these claims conflict with membership in larger communities, such as progressive political movements or the American nation? In her multi-faceted investigation of the thorny legal and social terrain mapped out by these questions, noted scholar Martha Minow offers lawyers and lay readers alike a broader understanding of the legal issues bearing on such incendiary questions as affirmative action, segregation, gay and lesbian rights, racial redistricting, and "identity politics." Not Only for Myself uses well-known incidents, such as the furor over the casting of Miss Saigon and the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to explain the legal concepts behind court decisions affecting all our lives.

This volume offers a novel look at the intricate relationship between the cognitive sciences and various dimensions of the law.