The law in “David Copperfield” – the social representation of lawyers

Abstract

Whereas that a representation is an assignment of figurative and symbolic meanings about a reality, and its assimilation collectively allows the establishment of a social representation. Consequently, law must be considered as a field permeated by such representations, since it is not a legal world council, its vocabulary, formalities and the like. To expose the social panorama of the representations of jurist, so that, for that, the work David Copperfield of the writer Charles Dickens is analyzed. To produce the present work we used the bibliographic survey, based on the exploratory method, with emphasis on The Theory of Novel by Georg Lukács, as well as on the Theory of Social Representations by Serge Moscovici and the Opacity of Law by Carlos María Cárcova. In view of the barriers created by the legal discourse regarding its knowability by the layman, a social representation of the Law is perceived as a tendency and often unrelated to justice, which in turn affects the credibility of lawyers.