Social Sciences and the Law
reading process of mentally interpreting written symbols. Facility in reading is an essential factor in educational progress, and instruction in this basic skill is a primary purpose of elementary education. The ability to read was not considered important for most laymen until sometime after Johann Gutenberg's invention of the printing press (c.1450) and the Protestant Reformation, with its emphasis on individual interpretation of the Bible. Until that time reading was generally restricted to the clergy and certain members of the nobility. Although illiteracy is still a problem in many areas of the world, compulsory childhood education laws have assured that most citizens of advanced industrial nations can read. Physiological and psychological studies suggest that the process of reading is based on a succession of quick eye movements, known as fixations, across the written line, each of which lasts for about a quarter of a second. In each fixation more than one word is perceived and interpreted, so that a skilled reader may take in more than three words per fixation when reading easy material. Depending on the rate of fixations and the difficulty of the material, an adult can read and understand anywhere from 200 to 1,000 words per minute. There has been considerable difference of opinion about the best method of teaching children to read. By the end of the 20th cent. the educational concensus was largely that a combination of phonics, which emphasizes sound, and the...
John Paul Stevens 1920-, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1975-). After receiving his law degree from Northwestern Univ. (1947), he clerked with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge (1947-48). After many years of private practice in Chicago, he was named to the federal Court of Appeals in 1970. In 1975, President Ford named him to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a Justice, he was allied with neither the liberal nor the conservative wings of the court, maintaining a moderate and independent voting record. The replacement of liberal justices by more conservative appointees made Stevens one of the more liberal members of the court in the 1990s.
Alexis de Tocqueville , 1805-59, French politician and writer. He was prominent in politics, particularly just before and just after the Revolution of 1848 (see revolutions of 1848 ), and was minister of foreign affairs briefly in 1849. His observations made in 1831 during a government mission to the United States to study the penal system resulted in De la démocratie en Amérique (2 vol., 1835; tr. Democracy in America, 4 vol., 1835-40), one of the classics of political literature. A liberal whose deepest commitment was to human freedom, Tocqueville believed that political democracy and social equality would, inevitably, replace the aristocratic institutions of Europe. He analyzed the American attempt to have both liberty and equality in terms of what lessons Europe could learn from American successes and failures. Tocqueville's other important works are L'Ancien Régime et la révolution (1856; tr. 1856), which stressed the continuance after the French Revolution of many trends that had begun before, and his Recollections (1893; tr. by A. Teixeira de Mattos, 1896; complete ed. by J. P. Mayer, 1949). There are numerous English editions of his works, correspondence, and travel notebooks. Bibliography: See biographies by J. P. Mayer (tr. 1960, repr. 1966), J. Epstein (2006), and H. Brogan (2007); studies by E. T. Gargan (1965), M. Zetterbaum (1967), S. I. Drescher (1968), R. Boesche (1987), L. E. Shiner (1988), S. A. Hadari (1989), and S....
The category of social sciences and the law includes everything from anthropology and archeology to education and law. While its study often includes elements of archeology, anthropology covers the study of cultures, social relations, and human behaviors. Anthropologists and archeologists have studied the Aztecs to the Australopithecus, or early man, and have furthered our understanding of both.
I ... Read more
Education, which continues to be available to more and more people, is the foundation of advanced civilization. The modern system of colleges and universities began around the 12th century as a way to achieve further training in law, theology, and medicine. Today, universities and other places of higher learning can be found in every country.
The practice of law began around the time of the Magna Carta and today has created a system of justice that’s as varied as the countries and cultures of the world. This leads into another element of social sciences and the law, namely political science and government. Around the world, there are many political systems, from democracies to dictatorships.
Sociology and social reform has continued to change the landscape of human rights and our understanding of how people interact. Leaders who fought for social reform include Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.