Essay on Inequality In The Legal System

Free Inequality In The Legal System papers

Internet Regulation
The Internet is a method of communication and a source of information that is becoming more popular among those who are interested in, and have the time to surf the information superhighway. The problem with this much information being accessible to this many people is that some of it i

Interpreting the Text of The Constitution
The United States Constitution defines the laws of the land as the Constitution itself and those laws or legal documents that are constitutionally passed through legislature. The role of upholding these laws and interpreting them in cases are assigned to the judicial branch. Our judicial system is

In the United States, true equality has never existed. From the

Declaration of Independence to modern times, the US legal system has failed at

any attempt at equality. ‘...all men are created equal...’ may be what the

Declaration says, but ‘some men are more equal than others’ is how the legal

system interprets that phrase. The actual reality of the Declaration of

Independence is that all free, white, landowning men are created equal.

Therefore, inequality has always existed in the united States’ legal system

and continues to exist today; however, the inequality presently in the system

is not as blatant as what it once was. Slavery continued in the United States

for nearly ninety years after the Declaration, and African Americans still

feel the sting of inequality today. If the US legal system is blind and just

as it is supposed to be, why, then, is a minority, such as the African

American race, the majority?

One of the most controversial issues today is the act of racial

profiling. The most common form is direct, meaning victims are directly

profiled, usually by the police. In this form, individual officers act on

racial stereotypes against racial minorities, especially African Americans.

Recent studies in New Jersey and Illinois have confirmed that minorities are

disproportionately targeted by police officers, although minorities are almost

helpless in reporting ‘color of law’ attacks. It is their word against a

legal official and, in most cases, the minority victim does not receive

justification because the officers are cleared of charges. In 1957 President

Eisenhower mandated that the United States Department of Justice prosecute

civil rights violations, to include police misconduct, thus, allowing uniform

application of civil rights law across the nation. Officers cleared of

wrongdoing often do not understand the legal guidelines for police misconduct

and feel unjustly targeted by the Department of Justice or the Federal Bureau

of Investigation, which have jurisdiction in this matter. That feeling of

injustice is false, considering that out of nearly 10,000 color of law

complaints received each year by the Department of Justice, only about thirty

police officers are actually prosecuted (Schafer). Since 1957 approximately

74 percent of all civil rights investigations reported each year allege police

misconduct (Schafer). In the rare case that a police officer is actually

punished, penalties could range from probation all the way to the death

penalty depending on the severity of the crime. According to a June 1999

study done by the American Civil Liberties Union, many states have denied that

racial profiling occurs despite overwhelming evidence supporting it. The

public wants to believe that police officers are doing their jobs righteously

by protecting and serving; however, according to the study, most Americans can

recognize the difference between racism and assertive, effective policing

(Worden).

Millions of Americans watch television everyday for various reasons, but

the most common one is to get the latest news. People like to stay informed,

but what good is it when they are constantly being misinformed? The media

tend to ‘profile’ just as much, if not more, than police, just in an indirect

way, thus, the second form of racial profiling. The media fails to cover

their own profiling, but are the first to criticize police racial profiling.

When they actually do acknowledge their own profiling, they tend to try to

cover it up more than give coverage. The number of African Americans involved

in an issue are usually over-represented by the media, therefore further

racializing the issue. This fact that African Americans seem to be so largely

involved in so many issues is viewed as nothing more than unfortunate reality,

so it is not viewed as racism. Certain issues constantly associated with

African Americans include drugs, crime, welfare and the affirmative action

policy.

Indirect profiling by the media focused mainly on tow topics: drugs and

crime. Public opinion polls indicated the overwhelming majority of Americans

had ‘relatively little firsthand experience with the extent of the problems

associated with drug use.’ Also ‘the majority of Americans report getting

most of their information about the seriousness of the illicit drug problems

from the news media, mainly television’ (‘Media Blackface’). An article

written by Raja Mishra appearing in the Denver Post on March 19, 1998,

reported how ‘doctors said the public has been misled by media accounts of

certain issues’ (Media Blackface’).

In March 1998 two studies on the United States drug policy were released

by the Physician Leadership on the National Drug Policy. The first study

concluded that drug treatment of drug addiction was not only an effective

health measure, but that it was much more cost-effective than the

criminalizing policies of the current ‘drug war’ (‘Media Blackface’). One

section of the study showed how, contrary to popular perception, drug addicts

are not primarily members of minority racial and ethnic groups. The research

showed, conclusively, that drug addiction reaches across all strata of

society. The most likely drug users and abusers are actually educated

Caucasians. Last year over half of those who admitted using heroine and 60

percent of monthly cocaine users were Caucasian. 70 percent of regular

marijuana users were reported as Caucasian, while only one sixth were reported

as African American (‘Media Blackface’).

Another study about the public misperception of drug use was ‘The Public

and the War on Illicit Drugs’, a survey of fifty years of public opinion. It

appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found

that although Americans did not think the so-called ‘war on drugs’ was

succeeding, they did not want to abandon the criminalization approach pushed

by the government (‘Media Blackface’). The PLNDP presented the JAMA study at

its press conference to emphasize how public opinion and the judgment of

physicians were at odds against each other and how the news media was playing

a leading role in misinforming the public about the health and financial

issues at the heart of the ‘Drug War’ policy (‘Media Blackface’). These

findings were not covered by any of the three major newsweeklies including

Time, US News & World Report or Newsweek. When the story was actually covered

by CNN Today, Associated Press, and USA Today, the dominant media focused on

the disconnection between the views of the public and the research of the

physicians-but said nothing about the role of the news media in fostering the

stereotypes fueling the bad drug policy (‘Media Blackface’).

A crime study done by the UCLA professors Franklin Gilliam and Shanto

Iyengar entitled, ‘Crime in Black and White: The Violent, Scary World of

Local news’, appeared recently in the academic journal Press/Politics. It

found through a content analysis of a local television station KABC in Los

Angeles that the coverage of crime featured two important cues: ‘crime is

violent and criminals are nonwhite’ (‘Media Blackface’). It revealed how

television viewers were so accustomed to seeing African American crime

suspects on the local news that even when the race of the suspect was not

specified , viewers tended to remember seeing an African American suspect.

Another crime study done by Yale University professor Martin Gilen

entitled ‘Race and Poverty in America: Public Misperceptions and the American

News Media’, was published in the Public Opinion Quarterly in 1996. The study

found that while African Americans make up 29 percent of the nation’s poor,

they constitute 62 percent of the images of the poor in leading news magazines

and 65 percent of the images of the poor on leading network television news

programs (‘Media Blackface’). On these news programs the poor were not only

portrayed as African American, but they were also portrayed in the most

unsympathetic fashion. ...