The allure of law schools as transformative institutions in the United States prompted Christian Right leaders to invest in legal education in the 1990s and early 2000s. The aspiration was to control the training of lawyers in order to challenge the secular legal monopoly on law, policy, and culture. In this article, we examine three leading Christian conservative law schools and one training program dedicated to transforming the law. We ask how each institution seeks to realize its transformative mission and analyze how they organize themselves to produce the kinds of capital (human, intellectual, social, cultural) needed to effectively change the law. To do so, we develop a typology of legal institution-building strategies (infiltration, supplemental, and parallel alternative) to compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of institutional forms. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for those looking to law schools as sites of broader transformation within the law.

We investigate an unexplored aspect of the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation process: whether questioning senators treat female and minority nominees differently from male and white nominees. Applying out-group theory, we argue that senators will ask female and minority nominees more questions about their “judicial philosophies” in an effort to determine their competence to serve on the Court. This out-group bias is likely to be exacerbated for nominees not sharing the senator's political party. Our results do not support racial differences, but they do provide strong evidence that female nominees receive more judicial philosophy-related questions from male senators. This effect is enhanced when the female nominee does not share the partisan affiliation of the questioning senator. Together, these findings indicate that female nominees undergo a substantively different confirmation process than male nominees. We further find that this effect may be most intense with nominees like Justice Sotomayor, whose identities align with more than one out-group.

The Recognition and Accreditation Program (R&A Program) authorizes certain non-lawyers, or “Accredited Representatives” (ARs), to practice immigration law out of non-profit or faith-based organizations. Drawing on interviews with practicing ARs, I describe how, at the center of this group's approach to legal practice, is a firm commitment to their clients. ARs report being particularly attuned – thanks to their social position and life experiences – to the hardships many of their clients confront at the hands of a punitive U.S. immigration system. I find this translates, on one hand, into an anti-formalist legal practice: ARs describe performing emotional labor in order to take the edge off of formalism's rigidity for their clients. Yet at other times, cognizant of the high costs associated with a legal error, ARs describe being much more formalistic, prioritizing legal tedium. The picture becomes more complex when considered in the context of devolution and immigration governance, where it seems the emotional and bureaucratic work ARs do to protect their clients may also be providing ancillary benefits to the state. I conclude by reflecting on the implications this research has for scholarship on the legal profession, for research on “access to justice,” and for understandings of immigration governance.

This article draws from a qualitative study of feminist legal strategies in the province of Salta, Argentina, to put forth an argument about the impact of federalism on subnational legal mobilization in a nonindustrialized federal democracy. It argues that the federal architecture of the state can strengthen the ability of local legal activists to pursue litigation strategies, and that it can do so in two main ways: by fostering the institutional autonomy of government agencies and insider activists working for the defense of rights at the local level, and by facilitating the provision of external legal resources and support for local legal activists in civil society. The theoretical perspective connects two research agendas that have not yet been combined to explain feminist legal strategies in federal systems: legal mobilization studies and gender and federalism scholarship, and proposes nuances to both strands of research.

Black civilians are more likely to be stopped by police than white civilians net of relevant factors. Less is known about whether or not racial inequalities exist in police use of force during stops. Using data on over 2 million police stops in New York City from 2007 to 2014 and drawing on literatures on race, policing, and the Black Lives Matter movement, we test hypotheses regarding the associations between race, civilian behavior, age, and police use of force. We also investigate whether recent reforms reduced any observed inequality in police violence during stops. Findings show that Black and White civilians experience fundamentally different interactions with police. Black civilians are particularly more likely to experience potential lethal force when police uncover criminal activity and this disparity is greatest for black youth compared to white youth. Overall, if there were no racial disparities in police use of force, we estimate that approximately 61,000 fewer stops of black civilians would have included police use of force and 1,000 fewer stops would have included potential lethal force from 2007 to 2014. Furthermore, while reform efforts substantially reduced the number of stops annually, inequalities in police use of force persist.

As transnational movements contest economic inequalities and demand inclusion into global decision-making processes, new models of collaborative governance have proliferated. Promoters of this new mode of governance suggest that it can produce “win-win” solutions through inclusive, consensus-based processes, if these arenas of governance account for power asymmetries within their rules and processes. Yet, by focusing on procedural aspects of collaboration, these accounts overlook how power operates through the wider landscape of transnational legal pluralism. This article adapts the sociolegal disputing approach to the context of global governance through an extended case analysis of the “global land grab.” In doing so, it demonstrates how power operates through the competition to frame disputes across transnational arenas. I argue that the frame through which collaboration is ultimately deployed serves to reconstitute conflicts, thereby subordinating competing claims to the values of the dominant frame. This analysis ultimately suggests participation in collaborative governance comes with risks. By engaging in collaborative processes, activists face the possibility of constituting the very markets they seek to contest.

This study draws on a qualitative study to examine, using the attitudes of high school male and female students, the possibilities for change in current practices concerning women's rights to inherit property and to take the custody of children in the event of divorce. The results show that male participants view their sisters as temporary residents in the family, and believe her inheritance may benefit her husband and her children who do not belong to her father's clan. Therefore, they strongly contest her inheritance right. However, a minority of boys were receptive to certain notions of women's rights and quite ambivalent about the gender status quo. Female participants, on the other hand, perceived the customary laws and patrilineal attitudes as a hindrance for women and girls to claim their inheritance's rights although the Congolese Family Code grants them such a right. Although the law grants both husband and wife this right, socio-cultural norms and customary law render women victims of violence. Both male and female participants also mentioned that in case of divorce, women are denied child custody.

Rural land registration has frequently been recommended as a step forward for developing countries. Registration is conceived not only as a means of clarifying property rights and promoting land markets, but also as a way to protect the rights of women and other vulnerable groups and prevent environmental degradation. This package of advantages was once associated with the land rights of individuals. However, more recently, customary interests have been recognized as important for social peace and as serving local conceptions of justice. In recognition of these objectives, Ethiopia and some other countries of sub-Saharan Africa have formally recognized what are often called “customary land rights.” Ethiopia is cited as a model of this approach in a multicultural setting. This paper shows, however, that serious problems associated with rural land registration have not disappeared. Fieldwork evidence from parts of Ethiopia suggests that customary property interests often go unrecognized. It also shows that the bargaining power of smallholder farmers who rent land to commercial farmers is being reduced. Simultaneously, there is an evident shift in decision-making power from households and communities to the state and officials. The complexity of these matters in practice raises questions about the interpretation of Ethiopian land policy.