You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In an effort to forge a psychoanalytic-sociological group psychology of the rule of law, a synthetic theoretical model is developed which analyzes the mechanisms of identification in groups and the internalization of legal values. This model has two theoretical reference points. First, Parsons' notion of internalized values is employed to account for variability of cultural beliefs in the normative aspects of the doctrine of the rule of law. Second, Smelser's model of basic modes of defenses employed by the ego against threatening intrusions arising in the social
Ms. Schatz is in the process of obtaining her Ph.D. in the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles.
The author wishes to thank Dr. Neil J. Smelser, Dr. Maimon Leavitt, and Javier Gutierrez-Rexach for their very helpful suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this paper. This paper was awarded the Robert J. Stoller Foundation Prize for best pre-doctoral essay in 1996.
world is extended to account for psychosocial features of interprofessional group conflict. In an empirical application to the Mexican case, it is found that undoing, intragroup identification, displacement, and rationalization are common adaptive mechanisms employed by constitutional lawyers toward presidential executive authority. Variation in culturally derived representations of legal beliefs are explained as products of differing legal values regarding the proper regulation of executive authority.