In this article, I compare the efforts to protect two transboundary watersheds that are home to some of the largest industrial areas in the world: the Great Lakes basin in North America and the Rhine river in Western Europe. Specifically, I show that the industrial discharges into the Great Lakes have been more toxic than the releases into the Rhine. This is puzzling as the laws and international agreements pertaining to the Great Lakes have been more stringent than those concerning the Rhine. I solve this puzzle in three steps. First, I show that the many voluntary investments in water protection by companies along the Rhine have outdone the considerable efforts that the U.S. laws have required of Great Lakes corporations. Thereafter, I argue that these different inclinations to invest in water protection have sprung from two alternative modes of conducting environmental politics: an adversarial one in the Great Lakes basin and a more consensual one in the Rhine valley. Last, I use an historical-institutional approach to show which institutional differences (at both the domestic and international levels) have led to the emergence of these different modes of conducting environmental politics in the two basins.

Looking at power struggles primarily within national boundaries reifies the nation-state and misses larger issues of control in the international system. Using the example of female genital cutting (FGC), we consider the relative importance of local constituencies versus international normative influence in creating national policies. We find that the occurrence of anti-FGC legislation in countries where many individuals support the procedure, the timing and character of national legal action directed against FGC, and the uniformity of political action all lend weight to the importance of international norms. At the national level, we find (1) reform is often a top-down process in which national laws are developed to change rather than reflect local attitudes, and (2) African states tend to work around local communities by adopting bureaucratic policies to combat FGC (Western countries, in contrast, tend to adopt formal laws). At the international level, our findings suggest (1) the structural position of international actors influences whether they deploy assimilative or coercive reform strategies, (2) contradictions among international ideals limits Western hegemony, and (3) international ideals can simultaneously empower (by offering options) and disempower (by disengaging states from local constituencies) local individuals.

At issue in the debate over social norms are different conceptions of human nature and the social order, of the ways people behave, and of the ways the law can both modify and be modified by social conduct. Three interpretive frameworks to the discussion of social norms are discussed: (a) whether social norms affect individual behavior merely as environmental/external factors or whether they also shape people's intrinsic predispositions; (b) the specific process by which norms influence people (i.e., whether preferences are considered predetermined or assumed to be modifiable as a result of internalization and persuasion); and (c) the ways social norms themselves are formed (whether merely via rational choice or also through historical transmissions). It is concluded that the discussion of social norms within a legal context is enriched by considering a “law and socio-economics” model, which combines the law and economics and law and society perspectives into a single discipline.

The institutional environment in both the private and public sector, according to a wide range of observers, is increasingly “legalized”: decisionmaking processes and substantive policies are increasingly subject to legal rules and procedural requirements that are enforceable in court. Although there is little dispute that legal liability has expanded in this way, there is great dispute about the effect of these changes, particularly their costs, on public organizations in practice. Some observers argue that legalization has imposed heavy costs, especially financial costs, on organizations; others, for a variety of reasons, argue that these costs are likely to be exaggerated. In this article I suggest that organizational expenditures on legal services are likely to be a valid indicator of certain important elements of the costs of administrative legalization. I present the results of a study of the legal services expenditures of 13 major U.S. cities over a 35-year period. The results indicate that legal services expenditures indeed have increased in many cities, although not as much as some commentators have speculated. Furthermore, there are significant variations in expenditure patterns among the cities, and a number experienced no long-term growth trend in legal services expenditures.

The formal literature on pre-trial bargaining offers considerable insight on how different bargaining procedures asymmetric information affect efficiency. Less attention has been paid to fairness, despite the fact that fairness is an essential component of any system of justice. We address this state of affairs by analyzing the equilibria of a pre-trial bargaining model for both fairness and efficiency. This analysis involves ascertaining whether fair and efficient equilibria are possible and whether they occur for common parameter values, and characterizing their behavioral and distributional properties. We conclude that fairness is a paramount concern to litigants and society and that fair and efficient equilibria are possible.

The social norm movement in criminal justice has received a lot of attention in academic and public policy circles. This essay critically examines social norm writings and explores some of the implications for methods of proof and research design in the social sciences. In the process, the essay offers an alternative theoretical approach. This alternative focuses on the multiple ways in which the social meaning of practices (such as juvenile gun possession, gang membership, or disorderly conduct) and the social meaning of policing techniques (such as juvenile snitching policies, youth curfews, or order-maintenance policing) may shape us as contemporary subjects of society. This alternative theoretical approach has its own important implications for methods of proof and research design, and the essay develops these implications into a four-prong research agenda.

The legal consciousness of ordinary citizens concerning offensive public speech is a phenomenon whose legal status has been vigorously debated, but which has received little empirical analysis. Drawing on observations in public spaces in three northern California communities and in-depth interviews with 100 subjects recruited from these public locations, I analyze variation across race and gender groups in experiences with offensive public speech and attitudes about how such speech should be dealt with by law. Among these respondents, white women and people of color are far more likely than white men to report being the targets of offensive public speech. However, white women and people of color are not significantly more likely than white men to favor its legal regulation. Respondents generally oppose the legal regulation of offensive public speech, but they employ different discourses to explain why. Subjects' own words suggest four relatively distinct paradigms that emphasize the First Amendment, autonomy, impracticality, and distrust of authority. Members of different racial and gender groups tend to use different discourses. These differences suggest that the legal consciousness of ordinary citizens is not a unitary phenomenon, but must be situated in relation to particular types of laws, particular social hierarchies, and the experiences of different groups with the law.

I employ a theoretical framework developed on the basis of the writings of Max Weber to analyze historical developments in the formation of international police organizations. I rely on a comparative analysis of selected cases of international police networks and centrally focus on the most famous and enduring of such structures, the International Criminal Police Commission, the forerunner of the organization since 1956 known as “Interpol.” Using a Weberian perspective of bureaucratization, I maintain that the formation of international police organizations was historically made possible when public police institutions were sufficiently detached from the political centers of their respective states to function autonomously as expert bureaucracies. Under such circumstances of institutional autonomy, police bureaucracies fostered practices of collaboration across the borders of their respective national jurisdictions because and when they were motivated by a professionally defined interest in the fight against international crime. In conclusion to this analysis, I argue for the value of sociological perspectives of social control that are not reductionist, but that instead bring out the specific socially and sociologically significant dimensions of control mechanisms.

The focus on actuarial tables and rating systems by state regulators is insufficient to ensure that protected groups are not discriminated against by the insurance industry. The most powerful tool used to exclude unwanted groups from the insurance pool lies in the subjective underwriting guidelines companies utilize, yet the rhetoric surrounding the insurance industry shifts attention away from this area.

In this article I examine how and why the term “sexual harassment” has been defined very differently in American and French law. Drawing on political and legal history, I argue that feminists mobilized in both countries to create sexual harassment law, but encountered dissimilar political, legal, and cultural constraints and resources. Having adapted to these distinct opportunities and constraints, feminists and other social actors produced sexual harassment laws that varied by body of law, definition of harm, scope, and remedy. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for studies of culture, gender and the state, globalization, and public policy.

Inside counsel to major corporations have accrued more power and status within the legal profession, but continue to struggle for influence and legitimacy within the corporation. In-depth interviews with lawyers and managers in large businesses reveal that inside counsel construct different professional roles for themselves depending on circumstances. We identify three ideal types of such roles: they act as cops (limiting their advice to legal mandates), counsel (combining legal and business advice), or entrepreneurs (giving priority to business objectives rather than legal analysis). The entrepreneurial role and its associated discourse seem to mark a departure from earlier studies of inside counsel. We argue that entrepreneurial tendencies reflect the efforts of corporate counsel to adapt their images and lawyering styles to the prerogatives of contemporary management. Accordingly, inside lawyers limit their gatekeeping functions, emphasize their dedication to managerial objectives, and defer to management's judgments about legal risk. Nonetheless, inside counsel retain their professional identities as lawyers and rarely express an interest in moving into corporate management. Inside counsel are “professionals” who present themselves as enthusiastically committed to corporate objectives.

A striking feature of the historical American criminal justice system has been the exclusion of racial minorities from decision-making positions, such as juror. In this study of criminal justice in a New Mexico county in the late 19th century, however, Mexicans are the vast majority of petit jurors, and frequently they decide the fates of European-American defendants. A regime of racial power-sharing between Mexicans and European-Americans characterized the administration of the criminal justice system. Racial power-sharing served the ends of American colonizers in legitimizing their governance after an initial violent occupation. Perhaps more surprisingly, it also served the ends of both elites and middle status Mexicans, at least some of the time. Criminal law—and, particularly, the jury as an institution—served both the colonizers and the colonized in this context.