‘No Justice, No Peace!’ Conceptualizing Legal Alienation in the Aftermath of the Trayvon Martin Case

Abstract

The controversial acquittal of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, ignited a huge public outcry and lead to protest marches in many cities across the US. This case bears all the signs of what Cotterrell (1992) has once described as 'legal alienation'. Unfortunately, neither Cotterrell nor most other scholars who use the concept of 'legal alienation' (see, e.g., Gibson & Caldeira 1996; Genn 1999; Gargarella 2011) have clearly indicated how this concept may be applied in empirical research.The aim of this paper, therefore, is to explore and develop the concept of 'legal alienation'. This will be done in three steps. First, the elusive concept of 'legal alienation' will be broken down into several dimensions. Second, and based on people's level of legal awareness and legal identification, I will introduce four different normative profiles to describe people's attitudes towards law. Third, it will be suggested that these normative profiles may be studied more closely by focusing on different types of social protest. Finally, these steps will be applied in an exploratory case study of the Trayvon Martin case, using data from newspaper articles, blogs and social media.It will be concluded that, although some elements still need further clarification and more rigorous empirical testing, 'legal alienation' is a fruitful notion for future research on law in society (alongside more familiar concepts like procedural justice and legal consciousness). Our case study suggests that the non-guilty verdict lead to strong feelings of 'legal powerlessness', 'legal value isolation' and 'legal cynicism'. Also, most protesters may be characterized as 'loyalists' and 'cynics', with only a small number of 'outsiders'. Although the Trayvon Martin case has gradually disappeared from the headlines, it is likely that this case will have a lasting effect on the legitimacy of the US legal system.