There has been much talk about the retreat or even death of multiculturalism. Much of this discussion confounds multiculturalism with explicit policy under that name. I argue in this paper that liberal law itself, in particular majority-constraining constitutional law, requires multiculturalism, understood as multiple ways of life that cannot and should not be contained by a state that is to be neutral about individuals’ ultimate values and commitments. The workings of legal multiculturalism are demonstrated through a comparison of benchmark jurisprudence on gays in America and Muslims in Europe. An interesting difference is that for Muslims, liberal law has also functioned as constraint, not only as resource, especially in the post-2001 period of heightened integration concerns.

Despite ongoing debates on the continued legal significance of citizenship in a globalized world, international comparative tests of the salience of citizenship under the law have yet to be undertaken. This article combines data from US and German courts with interviews of judges from both countries to 1) estimate the punishment consequences of lacking state membership; 2) compare the sentencing gap across international contexts, and; 3) identify and explicate the mechanisms linking citizenship to punishment considerations. Findings show noncitizens receive increased punishment in US and German courts net of legal factors, but this effect is less pronounced in Germany. The interviews suggest that a variety of intervening mechanisms explain these results. Prominent among these is that judges in both countries resent the fact that noncitizens compound their immigrant status with criminal transgressions. However, German judges place greater emphasis on consistency and proportionality at sentencing, thus guarding against overly harsh and disparate punishments.

Deputy sheriffs make arrests for many reasons: to solve problems, generate statistics, rectify perceived moral wrongs, or enforce compliance with the law. Many studies of discretion in arrests have looked at situational and structural determinants of the decision to arrest. Citizen demeanor, race, gender, and the nature of the crime have all been examined. Turning from these approaches, this study considers the institution of policing, focusing on the relations among deputies to try and explain who makes an arrest, especially when more than one deputy is on scene. Drawing from data collected during a year and a half of ethnographic research as a deputy sheriff in a rural California county, we show that arrests are a form of symbolic capital. Arrests are given, taken, and fought for as deputies struggle to work with each other and compete for prestige and positions within the Sheriff’s Office. Exchanged, gifted, and stolen as a valuable good, an arrest has the power to solidify existing relationships as well as foster divisions. As such, the arrest is a vehicle of social meaning and bonding, and a valued social commodity.

In the context of the recent financial meltdown, the financial industry has frequently been accused of being indifferent to the irregular practices of its members or even to be criminogenic. But how do actors of the financial industry respond to such accusations and defend themselves? How do they justify their actions when facing legal charges as well as public blame? This article elucidates these questions through a rare ethnographic case: the first criminal trial of a trader involved in the manipulation of Libor, which took place in London in 2015. Tied to at least $300 trillion contracts, Libor is a benchmark that plays a key role in the financial industry. The paper offers a sociological framework to capture the justifications of financial wrongdoings, arguing that they are structured around three elements: (a) a conception of rules; (b) a narrative; (c) a form of responsibility. I distinguish three justifications: the one of the maker, of the interpreter and of the user. I finally discuss how these justifications contribute to the general tolerance towards white-collar crime.

This article discusses the Federal Constitutional Court’s contribution to European “integration through law” over the past decades. The Basic Law’s openness to integration and to European Law is examined, as well as the co-operation between the Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice in the execution of European Union law and the protection of fundamental rights. The author provides a number of examples to show how the instruments of identity review and ultra vires review developed by the Federal Constitutional Court secure the agenda of European integration as agreed upon in the European Treaties. He also shows how national governmental bodies are bound by the concept of responsibility with respect to the European integration process and how the Court ensures the necessary democratic legitimisation for the acts of European institutions by requiring the involvement of the German parliament in political decision-making processes related to the European Union. Finally, the author explores the idea of the legal community and the criticisms that have been levied against this concept. He concludes by positing that the European Union can only preserve itself by remaining a legal community, and that the rule of law in EU law is indispensable, particularly in times of crisis.

The paper proposes a critical understanding of contemporary “low-skilled,” transnational contract work/circular migration as a guest-worker regime. Rather than approach circular migration as an instrument of development, or a human rights problem, this paper situates it within the larger, historical debates over the status of labour that emphasise questions of surplus extraction. Drawing on ethnographic research among Bangladeshi male migrants in Singapore and return workers in Bangladesh, the paper explores two crucial moments in the life of migrants—of choosing overseas contract work, and of leaving. In each moment, it highlights certain mechanisms that push migrants along the porous line between free and un-free work, incrementally toward the latter.