This article explores the ramifications of the intersections of gender, race, and class ideologies for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws in the years immediately following their passage. Drawing from government documents and archival data, I argue that the notions of gender, race, and class that permeated the legislative debate contained significant incoherences and self-contradictions, and that many of the dilemmas surrounding the enforcement of the exclusion laws against Chinese women resulted from these collisions. Faced with conflicting mandates derived from, for example, racism and patriarchy, enforcement officers had to choose between equally powerful discourses. Their ad hoc and often pragmatic approach to such dilemmas contrasted sharply with a policy process that otherwise appeared to be driven by unquestioned—and unquestionable—moral mandates. In concluding, I note the implications for our understanding of the contingencies and instabilities of ideology and the legal practices of which it is part.

This paper examines the use of legal claims by government officials and citizens in everyday political encounters involving civil rights. Data come from 580 letters sent to the federal government between 1939 and 1941, and from the replies sent by the newly formed Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department. In almost every case, the department refused to intervene and explained its refusal by making legal claims about federal jurisdiction. These legal claims masked the department's discretionary choices and thus helped depoliticize the encounters. Surprisingly, however, a substantial number of letter writers challenged the government's legal claims by deploying their own legal and moral arguments. The willingness of these citizens to challenge official legal pronouncements cautions against making broad generalizations about the capacity of ordinary people to respond effectively when government officials deploy legal rhetoric.

Canada's imprisonment rate has not changed appreciably since 1960. This stability contrasts with the increased imprisonment rates experienced by Canada's most obvious comparators—the United States and England and Wales. We examine this divergence and propose several interrelated explanations for Canada's anomalous pattern. While Canada is shown not to be immune to pressure for harsher practices and policies, it has been able to counter or balance these trends with other more moderating forces. In particular, we suggest that Canadians have largely been able to escape several of the wider forces or “risk factors” at the root of higher incarceration in other countries. Further, we suggest that certain protective factors of a historical, cultural, and structural nature can also be identified that have limited the extent to which Canada has adopted the same punitive policies documented in the United States and England and Wales.

Liberal legalism noncontroversially advocates procedural fairness and due process in institutions such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The visible conflicts come with the ebb and flow of international jurisdictional claims, suspicions of racial/ethnic and cultural biases in deliberations and decisions, prioritization of purposes in sentencing decisions, and the intrusion of institutional and international political debates into the liberal legal agenda. These conflicts threaten to create a legitimacy deficit in diffuse support for the ICTY. We examine these conflicts within the context of two surveys about the ICTY conducted in Sarajevo in 2000 and 2003. The results indicate that the citizens of Sarajevo increasingly believe that the ICTY is politically influenced by internationally appointed judges, peaking with the sentencing of Stanislav Galic for the siege of Sarajevo. This conflict focuses on issues of substantive rather than procedural justice and is increasingly articulated as a rejection of international political intervention that subverts the need for a local sense of justice. This may be a sequence of political conflict and disillusionment that is as inevitable as it is unavoidable.

What are the conditions conducive to long-term transplantation of mafia groups in new territories? This article systematically reviews a number of factors that facilitate such an outcome and then explores two attempts at transplantation by members of the Calabria-based mafia group `Ndrangheta to the town of Bardonecchia (Piedmont region) and to Verona (Veneto region). While the former case was successful, the latter failed. The article concludes that features of the local economy—the presence of significant sectors of the economy unprotected by the state and a local rather than export orientation—generate a demand for criminal protection, and successful transplantation occurs in the presence of such a demand. Generalized migration or forced resettlement of mafiosi are not sufficient to predict transplantation. The article shows that a high level of interpersonal trust among local law-abiding residents is not sufficient to hinder mafia transplantation, contrary to established theories of social capital and trust.

This article focuses on the role of social capital in lawyers' careers by examining the career outcomes of Jewish lawyers. Although research on the legal profession has emphasized social capital as an inherently positive resource, this article conceptualizes social capital as multivalent, with the potential for both positive and negative effects. Drawing on five forms of social capital and examining four separate outcomes (type of practice setting, prestige of field of practice, satisfaction, and income), the analyses demonstrate that particular forms of social capital are indeed related to diverging outcomes. This study finds positive effects for the social capital that derives from reciprocity exchanges, but it also finds that the social capital built through dense social ties can lead to less successful professional settings. The conclusion explores the possibilities this raises for understanding the interplay between religion, capital, and legal careers.

In one of many traditions of critical race scholarship, this review opens with a first-person narrative. When I was asked to review Austin Sarat's new compilation of introductory readings on law and society at the “Change” breakfast of the 2004 annual Law and Society Association meeting in Chicago, I responded affirmatively but with rather tepid enthusiasm, which reflected—as I recall—the level of enthusiasm I felt for the conference overall, despite (or perhaps because of) it being my third year in attendance at the notoriously large and panel-packed meeting. When I was asked further to review the compilation specifically from a “critical race perspective,” my lack of enthusiasm quickly transformed to discomfort, and I wanted to immediately revoke my acceptance of the offer to do the review.