Weekly Topic 10/30/09

Realism's concern with the social effects of legal decisions is an interesting topic. There are many laws that are inconsistent with social reality. For example, the drinking age of 21 years old is a law that is widely ignored. It is inevitable that underage kids will drink alcohol. The judicial dockets are flooded with unnecessary cases regarding underage drinking. I would argue that if America were a truly free country, I could do whatever I want to my own body. I feel that drinking should be a personal choice, not a right earned at the age of 21. Similarly, I feel that drug laws concerning marijuana are inconsistent with social reality. Marijuana is widely used, yet propaganda and politics still continue to wage the war on marijuana. By keeping marijuana illegal, the black market thrives with artificially high marijuana prices. This money ultimately goes to gangs, drug dealers, cartels, and terrorists. If legalized, this revenue could be going to the government. It is estimated that the legalization and regulation of marijuana could bring the state of California 1 billion dollars annually. Also, prisons and courts are flooded with those convicted of marijuana offenses. Prison overpopulation is becoming a huge problem in the United States. They cannot build jails fast enough to keep up with the ever increasing amount of inmates. If marijuana were legalized, the courts as well as the prisons would not be so over-burdened. Additionally, medical marijuana users (yes, skeptics, there are health benefits to marijuana) would not be wrongly persecuted for their medicine. I will concede that legalization may have both positive and negative social implications. However, I do feel that the law should be adjusted to correct for these social realities. The current laws enforce unnecessary sanctions upon individuals for behavior that is considered normative. To not adjust legislation to social reality creates disparity between normative behavior and legally accepted behavior. If normative behavior remains punishable by law individual liberties are limited. There are both positive and negative implications of the realist position that law should be evaluated not only by social advantage but by social implication as well. One danger would be that legislation may evolve to benefit specific individuals and lead to a state where certain groups would be afforded more or less rights than other groups. One benefit would be that laws would not remain unevaluated by the social effects they produce. This would lead to laws that are more or less justified in their actual effects in terms of the behavior in question.