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Sample Research Proposal on Stigma and Justice the influence of Stigma on Social Norms, Legal Rules and Decision-making Process.

Law can be a tool social control, but it can be a tool to trigger social change and eliminate injustice in social field. For some idealists, the ultimate goal of legal system is to create and maintain a well society of justice. They believe that we can achieve the goal through democracy and rule of law. Thus, the tasks are two: maintaining a 'healthy' democratic system and ensuring rule of law. However, in any democratic society with rule of law, not only legal enforcement deviate from the original ideal, the law itself injustice sometimes. The question is: why?

Some attribute the injustice of law to self-interested judges and representatives; some believe that the discrepancy between rules and enforcement arises from the underestimation the influence of social field. For example, Moore believes it is semi-autonomous social field that attribute to the ineffective of legal rules. However, some events expose the insufficiency of these explanations.  

 

Example 1: Neither law nor any social norms recognize rape and murder. However, reports of murder, rape and violence among the thousands trapped in New Orleans' shelters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Example 2: Although Taiwanese has widely accepted rule of law and are conscious about right of due process. In 2002 SARS period, government quarantined all the medical worker and patients of a hospital without legal basis, no matter they were infected with SARS or not. Most people recognized the mandatory quarantine, and no 'victim' brings the case to the courts.

Example 3: Most semi-autonomous social field refuse the right to privacy and equal protection of law, however, HIV/AIDS carriers are discriminated and deprived of right to privacy in many circumstances.

            In these cases, the injustice of law comes not from any self interests of judges or officers. These cases show, even some legal rules are widely accepted by individuals and incorporated into social field, some deviant occur from time to time. One of the possible explanations is the effect of people's fear and stigma.

Different from descriptive methodology of legal anthropologists that usually presume a value-neutral legal pluralism, I assume a goal of justice in the legal system. Moreover, I focus my research on the SARS and HIV/AIDS regulation in an attempt to delineate the dynamic interaction between feelings, behaviors, social norms and legal rules. Three questions will be addressed in this paper::

1.       How does stigma occur?

2.       How stigma and fear influence the social field, people's interaction as well as stigmatized people's identity? How does the stigma & fear -influenced social field deter and distort the implementation of legal rules?

3.       In what way the law of social fields (norms) affects the decision-making process and legal rules. Do the legal rules play a role in shaping social norms?


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