The authors argue that the depletion of the open land frontier in Thailand has not led to the development of a strong central state, even though it has led to demands for innovations in the formal-legal order governing access to land. Institutional factors preventing the state from providing formal rule enforcement for the population combined with the lack of a landed aristocracy have maintained the discrepancy between legal rules and customary practices that prevailed when an open land frontier allowed people to avoid conflict by moving away. Since the mid-1980s, when the Royal Forestry Department drafted a new policy to promote commercial tree plantations, conflicts over forest reserves have increased, centering on the commercial tree plantations, on squatters who refuse to leave the reserves, and on the preservation and management of so-called community forests.

With a focus on the relationship between women's and children's rights and theories of globalization, we conduct an event history analysis of more than 150 countries between 1950 and 2011 to assess the factors associated with policies banning corporal punishment in schools and homes. Our research reveals that formal condemnation of corporal punishment in schools is becoming a global norm; policies banning corporal punishment in the home, in contrast, are being adopted more slowly. We find that the percentage of women in parliament is associated with the adoption of anti-corporal punishment policies in both schools and homes, suggesting a nexus between women's and children's issues. Countries with more ethnic diversity are slower to adopt home policies, however. We propose that minority groups in these countries may be resistant to laws because of the risk of selective or prejudicial enforcement. In terms of globalization, more aid is associated with both school and home policies, and countries that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child are more likely to adopt home policies. Surprisingly, international nongovernmental organizations are not significantly associated with either type of policy adoption.

This paper seeks to understand how decision-making works at the first appearance hearings (Custody Hearings) in Brazil, an initiative that intends to make the Brazilian criminal justice system more accusatorial. We used primary data gathered in the hearings between April and December 2018 in nine Brazilian states. Binary logistic regression models were applied to identify the variables that affect the odds ratios of pretrial detention. Results indicated a high level of homology between the prosecutors' requests and the judges' decisions, even when controlling for the characteristics of offense and offender, which precludes any direct openness to the defense. Decision-making in the Custody Hearing reinforces the inquisitorial characteristics and the institutional features of the Brazilian Criminal Justice System, suggesting that the reforms carried out over the last years were not able to change how actors operate on a daily basis.

Religious law is commonly understood as deeply conservative and unfriendly to women, even when it is reform oriented and “this-worldly.” This essay challenges that understanding. It does so by engaging the practice and lived entailments of Islamic family law and gender pluralism in Malaysia, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted since the late 1970s. My research reveals that sharia courts are more timely and flexible in responding to women's claims than in decades past, and that these courts are more inclined to punish husbands who transgress sharia family law bearing on women. In addition, women nowadays have far more access to resources for negotiating marriage, its dissolution, and the aftermath. This is not to say that women and men experience marriage, divorce, or the sharia juridical field as social equals; they do not. But this situation is changing in ways that benefit women as long as they embrace increasingly salient and restrictive codes of obedience and heteronormativity. More broadly, the essay problematizes tensions and oppositions between Islamic law and women's rights that are the subject of considerable scholarly debate and contributes to our understanding of the complex entanglements of religion and law.

Relatively little is known about the operation of legal systems in India during the period of Muslim political dominance, primarily because most disputes were settled outside of the courts that were maintained by the ruling powers. Even during the Mughal period, when the government was more highly centralized than at any other time before the British conquest, Mughal law enforcement seldom reached the village level. Only in cases where there had been a very considerable breach of the peace, or where the revenue of the village had not been paid, were villagers likely to come into contact with Mughal law enforcement officials. One reason why the Mughal legal system was relatively undeveloped in the rural areas was that the Mughals possessed neither the manpower nor the means of communications that would enable them to staff and operate such a system of courts extensive enough to provide convenient access to the villagers.

This paper reports the results of a survey of 282 clients of Sound Off, a Canadian newspaper ombudsman. The data suggest that the newspaper ombudsman works best as a communication “facilitator” but is less effective as a dispute “mediator.” Furthermore, this service was found to be of least benefit to the socially advantaged who appear to use it to pursue more difficult problems. Nevertheless, 73 percent of the respondents indicated that they would use this “action line” service again if the need arose.

This analysis of the juvenile court movement is critical of both functionalist and social movement interpretations. Following Meyer and Rowan (1977) and Hagan et al. (1979), I suggest that the juvenile court was not a substantive reform but served primarily to extend conventional means of child-control through the legitimizing vocabulary of Progressivism. Descriptive analysis of state statutes shows the derivative, ambiguous nature of the juvenile court as a legal phenomenon. Dynamic analysis of the diffusion of juvenile court acts shows that neither functional need nor social movement influence provides a convincing explanation for the rapid institutionalization of the court.

This article examines the business of three United States Courts of Appeals over the course of their history. The courts selected for study were the northeastern Second Circuit, the deep south Fifth Circuit, and the west coast Ninth Circuit. A random sample of 50 cases was drawn for each circuit for every fifth fiscal year beginning with 1895 and ending with 1975. The sample years were aggregated into four time periods: 1895-1910, 1915-1930, 1935-1955, and 1960-1975. The business of the three circuits was found to have changed substantially from the 1895-1910 time period to the modern period. In the earlier years the circuits had small proportions of criminal cases—with the exception of the Second Circuit—a significant portion of real property cases, substantial proportions of business cases, and significant proportions of tort cases. By the 1960-1975 period a sizable proportion of the business of all three circuits was devoted to criminal and other public-law type cases; there were negligible proportions of real property cases, relatively small proportions of business cases, and even smaller proportions of tort cases. Public disputes replaced private disputes as the major source of the courts' business, and over time there has been a convergence among the circuits in the mix of cases coming to them.

Because stereotyping affects individual assessments of ability and because of socializing experiences in the law, we argue that women and judges of color, while well-credentialed, feel pressure to work harder than their white male peers to demonstrate their competence. Using an original dataset of published appellate court opinions from 2008–2016, we find that majority opinions authored by female and non-white judges go farther to explain and justify their rulings, when compared to opinions written by white male peers. In comparison to other judges, opinions by white men are about 6% shorter, with 11% fewer citations, and 17% fewer extensively discussed citations. Our findings suggest that norms about crafting judicial opinions are gendered and racialized in ways that create higher workloads for women and judges of color.

The Petition Clause of the First Amendment protects any peaceful, legal attempt to promote or discourage governmental action at all governmental levels and all governmental branches. This paper describes our examination of SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) cases where citizens who contact the government are sued by the interests they oppose. We present the findings of a legal document analysis and summarize ongoing research to understand the social dynamic processes and extralegal outcomes of SLAPPs. The purposeful blend of qualitative and quantitative methods is highlighted as an appropriate approach for answering micro- and macrosociological questions involved in these cross-institutional disputes.

In making his televised announcement on the nominations of Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist for seats on the Supreme Court, Richard Nixon observed that he was merely fulfilling a campaign promise. For, he said: “… during my campaign for the Presidency, I pledged to nominate to the Supreme Court individuals who shared my judicial philosophy which is basically a conservative philosophy. … As a judicial conservative, I believe some Court decisions have gone too far in the past in weakening the peace forces as against the criminal forces in our society” (New York Times, 1971: 24C). In 1968, Mr. Nixon said: ”We need more strict constructionists on the highest court of the United States. In my view, the duty of a Justice of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law, not to make the law, and the men I support will share that view“ (U.S. News & World Report, 1968: 42).

This article explores economic determinants of lawyer behavior which in turn shape basic decisions affecting their clients in such areas as whether to file litigation, how much discovery to employ, whether to accept a settlement offer, and the like. Three methods of compensating lawyers are identified: fee-for-service, contingent-fee, and third-party payment. It is hypothesized that each of these methods creates very different configurations of economic incentives, some of which conflict with the best interests of clients. The possibilities for maximizing various of these economic goals are discussed along with the limits— economic and noneconomic—on such behavior. Finally, the article suggests some potential applications of this analysis for public policy and further research.

As a sociologist, I have always been envious of legal scholars' license to prescribe. They not only elucidate the ideas and interests behind the law, the ways it is applied, and the problems it confronts. Unencumbered by social scientists' reticence, they also tell us how to do better. The scholars represented in The Passions of Law argue in no uncertain terms that feminists should not appeal to disgust in attacking pornography, that levying more stringent penalties on “hate crimes” unjustly punishes opinions, that we should admit vengefulness as a motive for punishment, and that a wrongdoer's remorse should mitigate his penalty. Of course, the authors describe, analyze, and explain as well as recommend, and they do so in shrewd and enlightening ways. They also occasionally disagree strongly with each other's prescriptions. Those who argue that disgust is bad, shaming is good, and vengefulness is meritorious are countered by those who argue the opposite.

Civil commitment recently has come to replace the insanity defense as the most controversial issue in mental health law. While the resident population of state mental hospitals has plummeted in the past decade, cries that commitment be abolished altogether are heard with no decrease in fervor. Many others feel that the pendulum has swung too far, that patients' rights and community care have been seized upon by fiscally conservative legislatures to cease providing any care at all to mentally disordered persons.

The rhetoric of the Juvenile Court Movement has emphasized the individualized, non-criminal handling of youths who commit delinquent acts. While the procedures for handling youth in the juvenile court were decriminalized (which basically means that constitutional guidelines applicable to criminal trials were disregarded), the alleged delinquent acts have remained, for the most part criminalized. That is, delinquent acts are defined by the law as basically criminal acts committed by youth. A partial exception to this perspective is the juvenile status offenses. For the most part these acts (truancy, curfew violation, ungovernable, etc.) are viewed as “pre-delinquent,” i.e., pre-criminal kinds of behavior.

This structural analysis of the relationships among participants in a criminal justice system, viewed in its political context, pursues John Hagan's suggestion that criminal justice theory adopt a “structural-contextual approach.” Drawing on data from a survey of 211 criminal justice administrators, interest group leaders, and news reporters in Cook County, Illinois, we examine networks of contact among the various governmental elites and private groups, using smallest space analyses to depict the patterns of relationships. Although the literature suggests that the police and the judiciary are often closely entwined with local political elites, we conclude that the judiciary is a relatively distinct or autonomous set in the Chicago context. The police, however, are found near the political elites. The news media are strongly oriented toward enforcement agencies rather than toward the judiciary or corrections, and the public and private organizations representing less powerful constituencies, such as minorities, juveniles, and the mentally ill, are found on the periphery. Contrary to some suggestions in the literature, government officials are not found in the center of these networks. Rather, the core of the structure is hollow, indicating an absence of central brokers or mediators.

Previous research suggests that differences in judicial decisions stem from differences in personal characteristics of the decision-maker. Dutch private law proceedings permit a research approach in which the judicial decision-making task is simulated by presenting written decisional problems to judges. Judges (N=114) made decisions on the same nine cases and completed questionnaires on role conceptions and personality.

Findings suggest that judicial decisions are only moderately influenced by the personal characteristics of the judges. The judges, however, differed considerably in their decisions. Neither the influence of personal characteristics of the judges nor the characteristics of the cases can explain to a substantial extent the differences in the decisions. It was concluded that judicial decisions stem from an interaction of personal and case characteristics.

This study examines the reactions of thirty complainants to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Complainant class is found to be the single most important explanatory factor; sex and race are not generally important when class is controlled. Higher class correlates with more idealistic motives for filing complaints, greater participation in and higher expectations about the process, better case outcomes, and a more negative evaluation of the Commission. No complainant obtained all the relief sought, but lower class complainants were generally happy with any favorable settlement, while higher class complainants were not. Complainants who seek to vindicate a principle, and therefore are less willing to compromise, find themselves in conflict with the pragmatic approach of most private attorneys (whose own economic interests may also be inconsistent with those of their clients) and with that of the MCAD (which adopts a generally pragmatic stance and prefers to conciliate rather than adjudicate, partly because it is so difficult and time consuming to prove discrimination based on unequal rather than unreasonable treatment). Symbolic and emotional factors determine complainant reactions more than case outcome.

Sociological studies of the family, ethnographic studies of kinship and marriage, and legal accounts of family law have been neither clear nor comparable in explaining how members perceive and interpret arrangements such as “marriage” or “divorce.” These comparative studies invariably include case materials, and accounts which presuppose various linguistic and para-linguistic phenomena, meanings, and unexplicated usages. The precise character of comparable behavior remains obscure. Truncated categories translated from one language to another become verbal signals disengaged from the actual perception of social behavior and its interpretation in subsequent descriptions. The categories of different scholars are presented as equivalence classes in which the adequacy of the descriptions is never an issue because the author assumes that the reader “knows” what the author “means.” Although the categories employed describe general routine practice of members, there is little concern with the language, gestures, voice intonation, and body posturing accompanying the action scenes to which general categories refer.