It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.

Statistics, Rationalization, and the Law

-- By ThaliaJulme - 14 Feb 2008

Section I. Holmes and Cohen on statistics. Statistics and quantification as the methodology of the future.

Holmes essay and Cohen essay’s as starting point.

*Holmes: P. 7 of the print out version “For the rational study of the law the black letter man may be the man of the present, but the man of future is the man of statistics and the master of economics. It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV.” *Cohen. Transcendental nonsense: P 833 “Creative legal thought will more and more look behind the pretty array of ‘correct’ cases to the actual facts of judicial behavior, will make increasing use of statistical methods in the scientific description and prediction of judicial behavior, will more and more seek to map the hidden springs of judicial decision and to weigh the social forces which are represented on the bench.” -While Holmes and Cohen do not advocate entirely statistical methods of study, they do illustrate the learned man’s affinity for quantitative study. -Method: will use the pragmatic method advocated by Cohen to examine what statistics do, not what they are.

Section II Why does modern man have such an admiration for statistics? What is gained?

Subsection A Broad Theory

-Stats give us a sense of security and certainty. -Control -What are we legitimizing with these numbers? -What is the problem? The numbers themselves? Their interpretation? Their use? The form they take in the popular media? -Do they help keep people obedient and docile? -They seem more scientific more rationale

Subsection B Application of theory to the case of crime statistics

-Stabilization -Media -Numbers are easy to wrap your mind around. -LOOK UP: How are crime statistics collected? Where are they published? What type of information do the collect? Race? Income level? Age? What gets left out? What is included? Probably significant. -Durkheim. We need criminals for social cohesion. We need an Other. We need to define ourselves in opposition. We need to celebrate our collective goodness by condemning the criminals badness. Collectivity Social cohesion - Defining the criminal other in terms of numbers and types facilitates the conceptualization of the other.

Section III. What is the larger societal harm?

1. False sense of security. They skew and distract from other, perhaps larger problems. And who benefits from this obscuring? Probably not the classes defined as criminal. Urban dwellers have always wanted to develop a composite of the criminal type (photo composite pictures) Crime stats became popular during Jacob Riis time, a time in which the US was changing because of immigration. Crime stats help soothe the “Natives.” B. Can be used to justify atrocities. It is easier to commit atrocities when convinced of ones moral rectitude.

- Quasi science has traditionally been used to justify a myriad of atrocities. Ex: anthropology C. Pretense for social control? D. Rationalization and the Hampering of meaning production -I posit that obsession with quantification is part of the problem we have been discussing in class. Meaning and rationalization. -Modernity, numbers, Habermas, colonization of the life world, rationalization, Death of creativity, meaning production.

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