As public awareness of and concern about sexual victimization has increased in recent decades, stigmatization of sex offenders has also increased considerably. Contemporary sex offender policies transform discrete criminal behaviors into lifelong social identities. Although there is much debate about the efficacy and constitutionality of such policies, we know little about how the category of “sex offender” is constituted in the first place. In this article, I reveal how prosecutors and defense attorneys construct sex offenders, not as monsterous or racialized as is commonly thought, but as “lower class” men. This analysis is based on 30 in-depth interviews with prosecutors and defense attorneys in Michigan. These legal actors wield disproportionate power in defining the boundaries of criminal behaviors and individuals. That they associate sexual criminality with lower class men demonstrates yet another way that class-based inequalities are reproduced in the legal field.

The author examines the images of community that lie behind the Environmental Protection Agency's decision not to extend proactive, uniform regulation of the Clean Air Act to the problem of local industrial odor. Under this decision, the regulation of such odors remains dependent on complaints and local initiatives rather than on proactive governmental intervention. The legitimacy and economic logic of the reactive structures the agency endorsed rely on two assumptions: (1) industrial odors are an aesthetic annoyance rather than a toxic threat; and (2) local environmental conditions reflect conscious decisionmaking by homogenous local communities as to trade-offs, and preferences for environmental quality will differ among these communities. The author uses three case studies to cast doubt on the validity of these assumptions; they demonstrate in particular the mythical character of the “community” posited by the EPA as a foundation for viable reactive enforcement. Indeed, to trigger enforcement, it has been necessary to undertake heroic organizational efforts and to create novel forms of social groupings hardly characterizable as “communities.”

The partnership between Karl Llewellyn and E. Adamson Hoebel is generally regarded as the most successful example of collaboration between a lawyer and an anthropologist in the annals of Anglo-American scholarship. In many respects it is unique. There have been individuals who have been trained in both disciplines; a number of legal scholars have made extensive use of anthropological literature; jurisprudence has regularly provided ethnographers of law with some of their main concepts and in recent years there has been an extensive, if disjointed, dialogue between representatives of the two disciplines. But, Llewellyn and Hoebel apart, in respect of research there has been little alacrity on the part of lawyers and anthropologists in responding to calls for interdisciplinary co-operation. Moreover, there are sometimes signs of tension in relationships between the two groups, although for the most part such tensions are hidden behind the curtain of academic diplomacy.

We present a detailed case study of administrative responses to litigated reform efforts directed at the Texas Department of Corrections over a two-decade period. We found that administrators attempted to maintain their organizational boundaries by: (1) controlling information; (2) using political connections in the broader community; (3) launching a judicial counterattack; and (4) exercising administrative prerogatives. Defiance of demands from the broader legal community was related to: (1) the organizational culture of the Texas prison system, which developed and existed in isolation not only from the federal courts but also from oversight by state officials; (2) pronouncements by the prison system's leadership that created a moral climate in which court-ordered reform could be readily defined by prison staff as illegitimate; and (3) ineffective control structures within the system that failed to respond to violations of the law by prison staff. Keeping the limitations of a single case study in mind, we close with a set of observations for addressing court-ordered organizational reform in a comparative framework.

Conflict between individuals and between groups is a normal part of social life. The necessity of coping with disputes and emnity is universal, but societies differ in the ways they deal with conflict. Six basic modes of procedure of conflict management that fall into two major classes can be distinguished: triadic procedures; i.e., those in which the settlement of a dispute depends on the intervention of a third party (adjudication, arbitration, mediation) and dyadic procedures (negotiation, coercion, avoidance.). In the dyadic modes one or both principal parties must necessarily rely on self-help in processing a dispute, though possibly with the help of partisan supporters or representatives. Avoidance occurs when one principal withdraws from the conflict situation [“exit” in Hirschman's (1970) terminology]. By coercion, the threat or use of force, one principal imposes the outcome of a dispute and alone determines his concesssion, if any, to the opponent. Negotiation, once initiated by one of the principals, requires the cooperation of both parties and, if successful, leads to the settlement of a dispute by bilateral agreement.

The study of dispute settlement within the sociology of law has, for the most part, been organized around institutionalized processes of dispute settlement, which typically has meant around dispute settlement institutions. Although some researchers—notably in anthropology—have provided detailed natural histories of disputes, including information about denouements, most dispute settlement research has focused on the immediate inputs into the institutions of dispute settlement, on processes of dispute settlement, and on dispute resolutions both as outcomes of processes and outputs of institutions. Inputs of interest have included, on the one hand, parties and their representatives and, on the other, the disputes parties bring. Process has been broadly defined to include actions that occur within dispute settlement institutions and also organized patterns of behavior, such as Eskimo song duels, that may not be institution bound. Outcomes and outputs are typically confounded and operationalized as the decisions of institutions, although we know that in some settings these decisions do not necessarily determine party outcome.

Scholars argue that litigation can have positive and negative “radiating” or indirect effects for social movements, irrespective of formal judicial decisions. They see litigation as a dynamic process with distinctive features yet nonetheless intertwined with advocacy in other forums. Litigation can indirectly shape collective identities, reframe debates, or provide political leverage. However, the mechanisms behind these radiating effects are poorly understood. Through an analysis of lawsuits and related activism by Korean survivors of Japanese actions in the first half of the twentieth century, this article disaggregates the mechanisms behind litigation's productive indirect effects. It theorizes and illustrates mechanisms such as attribution of similarity, brokerage, issue dramatization, political cover, and intergroup discussions. These mechanisms help us understand how litigants obtain litigation's indirect effects and thus also the broader impact of postwar compensation lawsuits in East Asia, despite few judicial victories. The article contributes non-Western and transnational cases to scholarship on litigation's indirect effects.

Beer has been prohibited in Iceland since 1915, but wine has been legally imported since 1922, as have all other alcoholic beverages since 1934. Since 1932, ten unsuccessful attempts have been made to repeal the beer prohibition. Using the records of parliamentary debates, newspaper reports, opinion poll results, and interviews, we examine the degree of fit between this legislation and Gusfield's model of linkage between status politics and symbolic legislation (Gusfield, 1955, 1963, 1967). We also identify the type of demographic and economic settings that appear to create an environment that encourages symbolic politics.

For a half century or more it has been understood that the services of attorneys are not equally available to all who need them and a body of research has gradually been assembled which casts light on a number of factors relevant to how clients find attorneys and pay for their services. Among issues which have been probed are: the nature and extent of the public's need for legal services, the reasons for the failure of the poor to refer their problems to attorneys, the effect of OEO and legal aid offices on availability of legal services and the need for improved legal services for the middle class (Christensen, 1970). With few exceptions, however, the role of individual practicing attorneys in making legal services more widely available by occasionally working for a reduced fee, or for no fee at all, has never been systematically studied.

How do courts award noneconomic damages? Does it matter if the state is the defendant? This article addresses these questions in the context of medical malpractice appeals to the Spanish Supreme Court. Moreover, this study provides the first empirical analysis of the quantification of noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases in administrative courts, where the state is the defendant, and in civil courts. This separation of jurisdictions is a common feature in civil law tradition countries. Yet, critics of this separation in general, and specialized courts in particular, argue that parties might be subject to different treatments and that similar cases might reach different outcomes, namely in terms of the quantification of damages. A consistent result of this paper is that no significant differences between noneconomic damages in civil and administrative appeals were found. The separation of jurisdictions does not necessarily imply that courts reach different outcomes, even when the state is the defendant. Citizens should not refrain from bringing their claims forward against the state, a more powerful party. In the current era of increasing juridification and judicialization of modern life (Ginsburg 2009; Hirschl 2006; Hirschl 2011), it is crucial for society that citizens and other parties litigating with the state are not disadvantageously treated.

Substantial research and policymaking have focused on the importance of lawyers in ensuring access to civil justice. But do lawyers matter more in cases decided by certain types of judges than others? Do lawyers matter more in certain political, legal, and organizational contexts than others? We explore these questions by investigating removal proceedings in the United States—a court process in which immigration judges decide whether to admit noncitizens into the United States or deport them. Drawing on over 1.9 million removal proceedings decided between 1998 and 2020, we examine whether the representation effect (the increased probability of a favorable outcome associated with legal representation) depends on judge characteristics and contextual factors. We find that the representation effect is larger among female (than male) judges and among more experienced judges. In addition, the representation effect is larger during Democratic presidential administrations, in immigration courts located in the Ninth Circuit, and in times of increasing caseload. These findings suggest that the representation effect depends on who the judge is and their decisional environment, and that increasing noncitzens' access to counsel—even of high quality—might be insufficient under current circumstances to ensure fair and consistent outcomes in immigration courts.

This paper is a case study of the occupational safety and health provisions of the Italian Workers' Rights Law of 1970, which gave Italian workers the broad right to regulate safety and health conditions at the shop level. The paper traces the political history of this controversial legislation and workers' and employers' responses to it. It then provides evidence that the law was neither the mere “symbolic gesture” nor the tool to “open new horizons” that observers variously predicted. The paper argues that to account for the formulation of this law and its ambiguous impact, the economic and political contradictions into which it was inserted must be placed at the center of analysis. It thus challenges the kind of legal determinism implicit in many analyses of the sociology of law that make the state and legal phenomena the central actors.

James Q. Wilson (1971: 4-5) has observed that militant police unions may constitute the greatest obstacle to reform and innovation in contemporary American police practice. To date, most social science studies of the police have focused on the analysis and consequences of individual officer behavior and not on collective actions by policemen to influence law enforcement policy. The absence of in-depth studies of police from a group perspective is significant in view of research (Horton, 1970; Kaufman, 1969) which indicates that municipal agencies in larger cities are moving toward a joint management-labor determination of goals and administration under the prodding of activist employee associations.

In 1963 the Italian historiographer Arnaldo Momigliano told an assembly of legal historians that they were gathered to celebrate “a historical event of some importance, the end of history of law as an autonomous branch of historical research.” At least in the historiography of ancient law, he said, “the elimination of history of law as independent history now seems to me to be settled.”

This paper offers a qualitative empirical examination of the noncompliance of Israeli female welfare recipients with welfare laws and authorities. The paper demonstrates that their behavior, defined as “welfare fraud” by the law, is a limited form of collective resistance to the Israeli welfare state. Although the acts of welfare fraud that the women in my study engaged in entail a political claim against the state, the relationship between these acts and notions of collectivity is very constricted in form. The women's collectivity is shown to be constrained by the welfare authorities' invasive and pervasive investigation practices and methods. Due to fear of disclosure to the authorities, the women emerged as deliberately isolating themselves from their immediate environment and potential members of their like-situated collective. This weakens the connection between the women's acts of resistance and their collectivity, and prevents their acts of resistance from driving social change, trapping them in their harsh conditions and existence.

As Mark Twain once remarked about the weather, everyone talks about law and development, but nobody does much about it. How does law “set off, monitor, or otherwise regulate the fact or pace of social change?” (Friedman, 1969). Atomistic studies relating specific norms of law to specific sorts of social change are plentiful. Holistic studies purporting to explicate general propositions relating rules and behavior can hardly be found. The few that do exist do hardly more than assure us, most sincerely, that yes, there really is a relationship between law and social change.

What is needed is a general model relating law and social change. Here, we discuss (1) the definition of the problem; (2) its parameters; (3) an heuristic model; and (4) a variety of “middle-level” hypotheses that can be suggested. The specific focus of this discussion is on Africa.

The tournament model is a widely used mechanism to control opportunistic behavior by associates in law firms. However, this mechanism can only operate in certain economic (and social) circumstances. When those circumstances do not exist, the model breaks down, and with it the ability to control opportunism in the absence of some alternative mechanism. Prior research has not investigated whether the utilization of a tournament model prevents the opportunistic behaviors identified as grabbing, leaving, and shirking. In order to test the limits of the tournament model, it is necessary to find particular historical moments when the economic environment radically challenges assumptions/premises of the model. The dot-com bubble in Silicon Valley provides precisely such a time and place. This article demonstrates limits to the applicability of tournament theory. Those limits are to be found in the economic environment in circumstances in which: (1) exogenous reward structures offer many multiples of internal rewards; (2) demonstrably high short-term rewards outside the firm starkly contrast with the delayed long-term rewards inside the firm; (3) the managerial strata reduce their emphasis on long-term recruiting of potential partners in favor of short-term productivity by young associates; and (4) firms develop departmental leverage ratios in excess of their capacity to monitor, mentor, and train recruits.