The Adolescent and the Law: A Survey.

This paper examines the responses of more than 1,000 urban high school students in "Lake City" to a questionnaire assessing contact with the law, attitudes toward the law, and knowledge of the law. It shows that "legal knowledge" is not an "all or none" phenomenon--students have knowledge of some laws and are uninformed about other laws--and it demonstrates that legal knowledge is independent of respect for the law and disruptive behavior. These findings suggest that the city's current legal education program concentrates on the cognitive aspects of legal education and does not address the affective and behavioral needs of the students. The disassociation of students' legal knowledge and their personal characteristics suggests that legal knowledge is dependent on institutional structures rather than societal expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]