In this journal, I will be writing about, how the society can influence the law through legal consciousness. In the article by Kirkland (2088), readers understand how the society's perceptions about weight are influenced by the law. From the article, readers can understand the interactions between legal decisions and how they arouse the understanding of civil right consciousness in the society. The social attitudes toward fat people have generated biased legal outcomes. Nonetheless, from the article readers gain a new perspective of how they can utilize the law as an instrumental tool that shapes the attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors of the society towards a specific group of individuals or a topic. The law allows people to understand how issues of stigmatization, inclusion, and discrimination affect vulnerable people in the society. Therefore, how the law is used to highlight certain topics determines how the society will respond. Kirkland (2008) focuses on the theme of legal consciousness by drawing a new perspective on the issue of legal discrimination of a person based on their physical appearance.
The author provides the readers with a new perspective of how the civil rights citizens can be abused or protected when legal consciousness is reinforced by the law. Kirkland (2008) not only covers the issue of weight discrimination but also draws the attention of the reader to how anti-discrimination laws function to protect the civil rights of a person. While reading the article, one gains a broader understanding of the larger context of antidiscrimination laws, and how they influence the social life. The author provokes the thoughts of the readers by raising focus on the legal dilemmas in anti-discrimination laws. Thus, readers understand how the society can use its experiences to influence the law, by proposing new strategies that allow legal practitioners and the society to navigate through the legal questions specific social values that affect legal outcomes.
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References
Kirkland, A. (2008). “Think of the Hippopotamus: Rights Consciousness in the Fat Acceptance Movement” Law & Society Review 42 : 397- 428
