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Public Perceptions of the Legitimacy of the Law and Legal Authorities: Evidence from the C aribbean
Author(s) -
Johnson Devon,
Maguire Edward R.,
Kuhns Joseph B.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/lasr.12102
Subject(s) - legitimacy , conceptualization , procedural justice , context (archaeology) , perception , economic justice , law , legal psychology , political science , sociology , jurisprudence , law and economics , psychology , geography , politics , archaeology , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , computer science
Research on procedural justice and legitimacy has expanded greatly across the social sciences in recent years. The process‐based model of regulation, which links people's assessments of procedural justice and legitimacy to their compliance with the law and legal authorities, has become particularly influential in criminology and sociolegal studies. A review of the previous research on perceived legitimacy highlights two important features. First, legitimacy has been conceptualized and measured in many different ways. Second, most of the research on legitimacy has focused on only a handful of developed nations. Using survey data from T rinidad and T obago, this article examines the conceptualization and measurement of the perceived legitimacy of the law and legal authorities. The findings indicate that some of the prominent conceptual and measurement models used in previous research are not empirically valid in the Trinidadian context. The implications of the results for conceptualization, theory, and future research are discussed.