What Is Manderson's Relationship To The Law

Manderson’s key claims revolve around the polarisation of the concepts of obedience and responsibility, specifically in association to a relationship with the law. He claims that in order to become a responsible legal subject, we are required to recognise differences between ourselves and others, thus demonstrating consideration, and ultimately love. Through a legal analysis of Maurice Sendak’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, Manderson explores Max’s entry into the law, describing him as having eventually ‘discarded the caput lupinum, and returned home a responsible legal subject’, due to his learning from transgressions with the law.
Adherence to laws anti-discrimination laws is a quintessential element of a responsible relationship to the law. As children, most of us are taught that we cannot discriminate others on the
In my personal experience, I have had to use my own initiative in order to discover the reasons behind these laws; hailing from a white, middle-class family, I do not have an innate sense of why discrimination is wrong. My entry into early adulthood was accompanied by a developing interest in social politics and justice, and therefore a growing awareness of how others perceive the world, based on their own experiences of socialisation within different communities; although there is no way for me to have a complete understanding of everyone’s perceptions. This experience compares to Manderson’s analysis of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, in that there is an obvious shift in the majority of children, from merely being obedient concerning a specific part of the law, to truly understanding the ‘positive constitutive force’ of love and the appreciation of differences upon which love is built. Attempts to teach children responsibility regarding