Social representations of law in adolescents in a city of the State of São Paulo (Brazil)

Abstract

This work presents representations of law among 480 teenagers from public and private schools from a city of the state of São Paulo (Brazil). They were collected through a questionnaire inquiring about the definitions of law, the reasons to obey it, the possibilities of breaking or changing it. Two theoretical approaches guided the analysis of the data: one establishing Tapp's levels of judgement of laws (1991), the other establishing the changing of the representations of law according to the social differences of the groups. This research detected levels rather conventional or pre-conventional among the students of the public school, whereas levels rather conventional and post-conventional were detected among the students of the private school. The analysis of correspondences revealed different representations of law among the two groups of students, owing mainly to their social and economical level.