Compliance from kindergarten to college: A speculative research note

Focused on children's developing ideas of rule, justice, and compliance, interview data from 115 subjects in kindergarten through college are used to reconstruct the jurisprudence-or legal value system-of youth. This investigation of normal legal reasoning (1) clarifies changing conceptions of roles vis-à-vis rule systems and (2) assesses the products and potential of legal socialization. Developmentally, youth see rules guarding against disorder and functioning as more prospective than coercive, prescriptive than prohibitive, beneficial than punitive, and dynamic than sacred. Parallel changes emerge in defining role relationships. By their own assessment, youth's perceptions are guided by a law-and-order frame, although they recognize that purpose and principle should determine compliance. For most, neither absolutist positions nor authoritative fiats insure justice. Optimally, justice is guaranteed through equality, rationality, consensus, and human rights. Only a modest number, however, accept that they can internalize these principles and, in judging the system by them, not be obligated to obey an unfair rule. While youth have the capacity for legal reasoning consistent with principles of major jurisprudents, to attain such ethical legality, socializing agents must define new goals, appraise old values, and create conducive contexts.