POLS 121 Chapter Notes - Chapter NA: Legal Culture

• School: University of Vermont
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 121
• Professor: Lisa Holmes

Document Summary

Research has shown that informal norms regarding the seriousness of common types of criminal acts govern plea bargaining and trial decisions in local courts. Informal norms that define seriousness of cases are unofficial rules and procedures that govern pretrial negotiations, the filing of motions and the scheduling of cases are seldom written down or explicitly discussed. Lawyers refer to these variations in norms as differences in local practice. Social scientists frequently used the term local legal culture to describe this network of unwritten standards and patterns of behavior. If existing patterns of decisions regarding plea and trial are grounded in local norms governing how cases ought to be handled, these shared attitudes could explain why efforts to reform plea bargaining have proved unsuccessful. This variation in actual trial and plea rates should be reflected in differing attitudes of practitioners in the court if legal culture is actually reflected in court practices.