Law v.s. Opinion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Law v.s. Opinion - Essay Example Born on August 1, of 1930, he recently passed away on January 23, 2002. His views embody the disciplines of many tenets including: philosophy, literary theory, sociology, and anthropology. He is the protagonist of the world of sociological studies, and he opposed and debunked some of the most prevalent antagonisms in the genre. His most popular work is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. In the 1967 study, he interprets how members of the upper class define taste as an aesthetic. He finds that the public has no genuine representation in democratic societies. Pierre Bourdieu asserts that public opinion does not exist. This poses the question, how should we conceive public opinion If it is true that the public does not exist, than the real question is, whose opinion is public opinion Rational Choice Theory poses that idea that human beings form their opinions and decisions based on collective observations and calculations. It also assumes all individuals are well informed of all of their options and that it is an inherent human tendency to think everyone makes decisions this way. If this is true, it would explain the blind faith people have in public opinion. It is a faith so devout, it often sways and molds popular culture ideals. Pierre Bourdieu strongly negates this view. According to his perspective, if there is no public opinion then, the courts judge based entirely according to the law, and their own personal judgment, which we perceive in compliance with an imaginary public. The constitution ends up having a very significant say in the lives of the people. This forces us to look at its core creation by the Federalists and the government that has grown to live by it. The government we have today has come a long way since it's creation by the Founding Fathers. With the new disappointments arising towards the current administration, many have begun to question and asses the purpose of the constitution structured by the Founding Fathers and how it still applies to us today. Some go so far as to suggest that the federalists who framed the constitution insisted on limited federal involvement, but the history of America shows this is not the case. The Federalists protested limited government, while secretly creating a constitution that might one day form into an all powerful force. In fact, history shows that every official in any given office usually tends to take actions to increase the power of the government, whether state or federal, regardless of party classification. This is a formula specifically structured to maintain a minority class of wealthy elite to rule over the majority. The only difference between then and now is technological advancem ent and experience in the elitist control of the masses. If it were not for the presence of these traits in American society, there would be no real physical change to analyze. In a sense, nothing has really changed; money is still as much the emperor of our nation now, as it was then. Until the twentieth century both scholars and the public revered the Framers as demigods and canonized the Constitution as the crowning symbol of a democratic revolution against tyranny. However, the many publicized political and corporate scandals of the Progressive Era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries influenced historians to begin viewing the Constitutional