ABSTRACT
Legal socialization has been defined as "the development of values, attitudes, and behaviors toward law". Legal socialization "focuses on the individual's standards for making sociolegal judgements and for resolving conflicts, pressing claims, and settling disputes". The theory of legal development is derived primarily from cognitive developmental theory. Cross-cultural research by Tapp and others over two decades supports the existence of a progressive legal-reasoning construct in the growth of ideas on justice and law. There have been no studies in the Soviet Union of the Tapp/Kohlberg/Levine theory of legal socialization. A common argument is that increased knowledge of the law will produce greater conformity to the law. Some of the much more extensive moral-development research has found that juvenile delinquents do reason at a lower moral level than do nondelinquents. There are a number of characteristics and factors concerning this research which make new cross-cultural studies imperative. Cultural socialization processes in the USSR have a strong influence on moral judgement.
