Origins The concept and phrase "law and order" has been around in the United States since at least the 1840s. In 1842 the
Law and Order Party of Rhode Island was founded after the
Dorr Rebellion in the state of
Rhode Island. The Dorr Rebellion began because in 1840, Rhode Island still used the
King's Charter of 1663 as its constitution, which held that only landowners with $134 in property could vote, effectively disenfranchised 60-percent of the state's freemen. In 1841 and 1842, Rhode Island Governor
Samuel Ward King faced opposition from
Thomas Wilson Dorr and his followers in the Rhode Island Suffrage Party who wanted to extend suffrage to a wider group of citizens. Governor King put together a Law and Order coalition of
Whigs and conservative Democrats to put down the opposition. King and his coalition declared martial law on May 4, 1842. The state militia ended the rebellion by the end of the summer of 1842. The Law and Order Party were initially opposed to extending suffrage, but they realized that the 1663 charter was archaic. After the rebellion, it became clear that they needed to compromise. In November 1842, they drafted a "
Law And Order Constitution" which extended the right to vote to all native-born adult males, including black men. Other leading proponents were two Republicans, the governor of California
Ronald Reagan and presidential candidate
Richard Nixon. Nixon used the term to appeal to various demographic groups, including working-class
white ethnics in northern cities. Nixon attempted to discredit the Democratic Party in the eyes of these voters, blaming it for being soft on crime and rioters. Previously, other politicians had used the term "law and order", although their use of the term was much less systematic and frequent than that of Wallace, Nixon, or Reagan. Political demand for "law and order" has been made much earlier before, by John Adams in the 1780s and 1790s. It was a political slogan in Kentucky around 1900 after the assassination of Governor
William Goebel. The term was once used by
Barry Goldwater in his run for president in 1964. The number of prisoners tripled from 500,000 in 1980 to 1.5 million in 1994. Conservatives at the state level built many more prisons and convicts served much longer terms, with less parole.
Riots Although the Civil Rights Act of July 2, 1964 forbade all discrimination on the basis of race, in 1965 police brutality towards a black man during a traffic stop resulted in a
major riot among the black community in the
Watts neighborhood of
Los Angeles, the government's response to which is considered by many to have been a failure. Indeed, every summer from 1964 through 1970 was a "long hot summer", though 1967 is particularly called that since
159 riots occurred that year. Additionally, after the April 4, 1968
murder of Martin Luther King, a new wave of riots broke out in over 100 cities, with nights of violence against police and looting and burning of local white-owned businesses. The inner neighborhoods of many major cities, such as
Detroit,
Los Angeles,
Newark and
New York, were burned out. National Guard and Army troops were called out. At one point machine gun units were stationed on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington to prevent rioters from burning it down.
Crimes In the post war period, there was a dramatic rise in violent street crime, including drug-related murders, as well as armed robberies, rapes and violent assaults.
Inner city neighborhoods became a breeding ground for violent and drug related crimes due to the economic shift, such as disorganization and overt poverty, which weakened the welfare of the neighborhoods, thus causing and giving option for the growth of the drug market. The number of violent crimes more than tripled from 288,000 in 1960 (including 9,110 murders) to 1,040,000 in 1975 (including 20,510 murders). Then the numbers levelled off. In response to sharply rising rates of crime in the 1960s, treatment of criminal offenders, both accused and convicted, became a highly divisive topic in the
1968 U.S. presidential election.
Republican vice presidential candidate
Spiro Agnew, then the governor of
Maryland, often used the expression; Agnew and Nixon won and were reelected in 1972. Most notably, the release of the murderer
Willie Horton who committed a rape and a rampage of severe violence when he was released is generally credited with favoring the election of President George H. W. Bush over the man who released him, Massachusetts governor
Michael Dukakis. Whatever the cause, Bush beat Dukakis by a margin of both popular and electoral college votes that has not been surpassed since
1988. The release of the murderer
Reginald McFadden, who went on a serial murder and rape spree, by the acting governor of Pennsylvania,
Mark Singel, may have been a contributing factor in the
1994 election of Pennsylvania governor
Tom Ridge, in which Ridge defeated Singel by a margin of 45% to 39%.
Results Advocates of stricter policies toward crime and those accused of crime have won many victories since the issue became important. Highlights include stringent laws dealing with the sale and use of illicit drugs. For example, the
Rockefeller drug laws passed in New York state in 1973, and later, laws mandating tougher sentences for repeat offenders, such as the
three-strikes laws adopted by many U.S. states starting in 1993 and the re-legalization of the
death penalty in several states. The phrase was used repeatedly by
Donald Trump in his presidential nomination acceptance speech in 2016, which
Salon.com interpreted as an intentional reference to Nixon's use of the term.
Politico Magazine reported that the rhetoric was at odds with the crime rates being at 50-year lows in the country. Despite common rhetoric about varying approaches by the Republican Party and the Democratic Party on crime, there is no detectable effect of different approaches or outcomes between cities led by Democratic politicians and Republican politicians. According to a 2025 study, there is "no evidence that mayoral partisanship affects police employment or expenditures, police force or leadership demographics, overall crime rates, or numbers of arrests." ==Usage in the United Kingdom==