The Law and Order Theme in Political and Popular Culture

Abstract

Law and Order became a political rallying cry in the 1960s, as conservative candidates like Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon criticized courts for putting the constitutional rights of criminals ahead of the need for effective police work and public safety. As the nation’s president after his victory in the 1968 presidential race, Nixon continued to emphasize the law and order theme. Meanwhile, a series of Westerns and cop movies, such as John Wayne’s True Grit and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, began to echo Nixon’s claims about criminals, courts, and law. Concerns about crime and the impotency of the legal system soon produced a set of remarkably popular movies about vigilante justice, including Walking Tall and Death Wish. Even when law and order faded as a national political issue, Hollywood continued to dwell on the idea that courts are too lax, turning the idea that criminals routinely escape justice because of legal technicalities into one of television’s and movies’ most familiar cliches. Crime rates have been plummeting for two decades now, and a series of re-makes of significant films from the Nixon era suggests that law and order’s grip on popular entertainment and the public imagination may finally be breaking.