White Americans, on average, do not support Black Lives Matter, while Black Americans generally express strong support. The lack of support among white Americans is striking, and we argue that it matters why this racial gap exists. Using a nationally representative survey collected during the crest of the first wave of widespread attention to the movement, we explore four potential explanations for

Social classifications are increasingly interrelated, far-reaching, and consequential for socioeconomic outcomes. We use the concept of marginalized legal categories to describe how the law disadvantages individuals or groups by transforming inherently ordered social classifications into consequential legal categories, employing intestacy laws as an illustration. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances

The nondiscrimination clause of the Affordable Care Act, known as Section 1557, formally expanded patients' civil rights in nearly every healthcare setting in the United States in 2010. Regulations required healthcare organizations to name a person to handle grievances and set up an internal grievance process for resolving them. Drawing on interviews with 58 healthcare grievance handlers, this study

Prison laws and policies often do not explicitly state the rights and privileges for the individuals residing there. This space is a unique example of where the law-on-the-books meet the law-in-action—a place where “law-in-between” operates in the hands of street-level workers. Using data collected from interviews with restricted housing unit residents and staff in four men's prisons, this paper examines

Diversion programs are increasingly being implemented as an alternative to more severe sanctions, especially within juvenile justice. The civil citation program in Florida is unique in that it diverts juveniles away from the justice system at the earliest decision point of arrest. However, despite its growing use in a number of states, there is little research on the program's implementation and outcomes

Since the 1990s, a sizeable body of case law has formed in the Canadian province of British Columbia in response to disputes over the political leadership of local gurdwaras, the name for Sikh places of worship and assembly. Although the disputes stemmed from religious and political disagreements, the legal issues addressed by the courts concern the proper bureaucratic administration of Sikh institutions

In [1], the following error was published on page 1. Funder Info This project was supported by the Justice Collaboratory at the Yale Law School and the Macarthur Foundation (15–108,050-000-USP). The author would also like to thank Andrew Papachristos, Tracey Meares, Frederick Wherry, Joshua Page, Jooyoung Lee, Nicholas Occhiuto, and Tony Cheng for their generous insights and comments, as well as participants

In [1], the following error was published on page 55. The written interpretations in the text are correct but not the displayed predicted probabilities of the gender differences in the table. The correct table is as follows: The authors apologize for this error. TABLE 5. Predicted Probability of Receiving a Temporary Protection Order by Victim Gender and County (Mixed-effects logistic regression) Metropolitan

Rural state and tribal court judges in the upper US Midwest offer an embodied alternative to prevailing understandings of “access to justice.” Owing to the high density of social acquaintanceship, coupled with the rise in unrepresented litigants and the impossibility of most proposed state access to justice initiatives, what ultimately makes a rural courtroom accessible to parties without counsel is

Civil protection orders are one of the most widely used legal interventions for intimate partner violence. Every American state has legislation that allows victims to seek legal remedies through protection orders such as preventing abusers from contacting them, requiring perpetrators to stay away from specific locations, and ordering removal of firearms. However, judges do not grant every petition

In spite of long‐term declines in the violent victimization of U.S. police officers, the danger of police work continues to structure police socialization, culture, and behavior. Existing research, though attentive to police behavior and deviance that negatively affects the public, analytically ignores how the danger of policing engenders officer behavior that harms police themselves. Drawing on ethnographic

Under what conditions will individuals mobilize law to resist states that operate above the law? In authoritarian countries, particularly in the Middle East, law is a weapon the state wields for social control, centralizing power, and legitimation. Authoritarian legal codes are overwhelmingly more deferential to state authority than protective of citizens' rights. Nevertheless, people throughout the

The major aim of this article is to examine how migrations affect private governance, taking as a case study the Prud'homie de pêche, a private order that has governed the fishery of Marseille for the past six centuries. Scholarship generally argues that social norms guarantee the efficiency of private orders and their ability to resist the arrival of newcomers. My data suggest that the Prud'homie

This article introduces the concept of collective liminality, a shared condition of heightened threat and uncertainty experienced by immigrant detainees and their families, as they wait, caught between two possible outcomes: their loved one's (temporary or permanent) release into the US or deportation. Drawing on 2 years of ethnographic data collection between 2015 and 2017 that included accompanying

This article presents the findings of the first research study of the Institutional Hearing Program (IHP), a prison‐based immigration court system run by the U.S. Department of Justice. Although the IHP has existed for four decades, little is publicly known about the program's origin, development, or significance. Based on original analysis of archival records, this study makes three central contributions

Interdisciplinarity is a delicate achievement. We learned this some years ago when the Program in Law and Society at New York University collapsed. News of the administration's reluctance to continue its support of the Program trickled down to us as graduate students in fall 2009. At the time, the Program's Director (and our advisor) was Sally Merry. Universities often celebrate interdisciplinarity

Qualitative interviews with one hundred defendants in Dutch criminal cases examine whether perceived procedural justice is a relevant concern for defendants, and, if so, which procedural justice components they refer to. The study provides a point of epistemological departure from the quantitative studies dominating the field, as it assessed which components of procedural justice (if any) respondents

Conservatives—both political and religious—are more likely than liberals to support laws regulating traditional or religious morality. The current study applies a moral psychological framework to argue that the association between conservatism and moral regulation law support can be explained in part by binding morality, or a moral orientation that privileges group needs above individual needs and

This article analyzes the everyday interpretive practices of corporations and bureaucrats that shape the meaning and force of international economic law. To understand how common practices such as public consultation submissions, corporate threat letters, and external legal assistance influence regulators’ understanding of their “legally available” policy space, we study the contested introduction

International relations scholars have traditionally focused on state‐centered accounts of international legal norm development between nations while sociolegal scholars have focused on Weberian notions of occupational authority. This study advances a constructivist sociolegal approach emphasizing activist action as playing a unique role in shaping international norms. Specifically, this study investigates

Legal authorities’ second‐order legal consciousness—their perceptions of others’ understandings of law—shapes the social realization of legal power. Analysis of interviews with welfare fraud enforcement workers from five US states reveals their perceptions of how clients view law, policy, and enforcement practices, and shows these perceptions’ consequences. Enforcement workers’ perceptions influence

The recent influx of police officers into US public schools has reshaped the context and frequency of children’s interactions with police. Yet we know little about how the presence of these officers in schools impacts the legal socialization of students, and whether youth of color might be affected or socialized in different ways than white youth. In this study, we analyze data from interviews with

Though most countries have established public defense systems to represent indigent defendants, this is far from implying their offices are in good shape. Indeed, significant variation likely exists in the systems' effectiveness, across societies and at the subnational level. Defense agencies' performance likely depends on their configuration, including their funding, their internal arrangements, and

Constitutions are an important feature of many authoritarian regimes. But what role do they in fact perform in processes of authoritarian regime stabilization and legitimation? Much of the contemporary literature focuses on authoritarian constitutionalism in transitions away from constitutional democracy. This article considers the opposite scenario: pre‐emptive constitution‐making as a mechanism of

Contemporary international criminal law suggests that head of state immunity does not extend to atrocity crimes, but the executive's office continues to be the safest place for suspected perpetrators. Moreover, indicted suspects can use the threat of international accountability to win democratically contested elections. This article asks how suspects and their surrogates translate an indictment from

Morality has been a key factor in naturalization. However, defining what constitutes good moral character has never been specified, leaving interpretation of the good moral character requirement to the discretion of immigration officials and judges. Based on an analysis of court cases filed by marriage migrants, this article expands our understanding of the legal interpretation of the “good morality”

underscores the books intention of offering help where so many people have previously struggled. How to be Happy is a compilation of questions, advice, and information built from the experiences of others, which readers can use to better navigate the potentials of law school. Young recognizes the uniqueness of people and the diversity of their experiences. The inclusion of anecdotes and information

was not enough, add to it a “nationwide stratified survey of popular understandings of the Islamic legal tradition” (10). As for the obligatory book-review quibble, I have only one to share: The book starts with Moustafa cautioning his readers not to conflate the “judicialization of religion” with your run of the mill “judicialization of politics.” I am not sure if the distinction is convincing, and

Author(s): Bishin, BG; Hayes, TJ; Incantalupo, MB; Smith, CA | Abstract: © 2019 Law and Society Association Media and scholastic accounts describe a strong backlash against attempts to advance gay rights. Academic research, however, increasingly raises questions about the sharply negative and enduring opinion change that characterizes backlash among the mass public. How can we reconcile the widespread

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 50 Latin American immigrants in Dallas, Texas, this article uncovers systematic distinctions in how immigrants holding different legal statuses perceive the threat of deportation. Undocumented immigrants recognize the precarity of their legal status, but they sometimes feel that their existence off the radar of the US immigration regime promotes their long-term presence

Hundreds of county jails are involved in detaining immigrants facing removal proceedings, a civil process. In exchange, local jails receive per diem payments from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration detention thus presents a striking case of commodification of penal institutions for civil confinement purposes. Yet we know very little about the counties participating in this arrangement

Studies on asylum give little explanatory power to the role of categories of worth in how lawmakers formulate asylum law in lack of a clear policy framework for determining eligibility for asylum status. This article contends that during periods of policy upheaval, distinctions of worth shift to forefront lawmaking: lawmakers renegotiate the moral boundaries between categories of deserving and undeserving

Allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment by prominent entertainment and media figures and politicians in the United States have brought renewed attention to a political debate that earlier had been focused on universities and the military: the apparent failure of institutions to address and punish cases of sexual assault by their members. In light of this debate, we consider how cases fare

Since the 1970s, advocates have used the term gender neutral to press for legal change in contexts ranging from employment discrimination to marriage equality to public restroom access. Drawing on analyses of all Supreme Court cases, federal courts of appeals cases, and Supreme Court amicus briefs in which the terms gender neutral/neutrality, sex neutral/neutrality, or sexually neutral/sexual neutrality

Powerful corporations leverage the law to shape the regulatory environments in which they operate. A key strategy for achieving this is litigation. I ask under what conditions corporations litigate, and specifically, what happens when two repeat players, transnational agribusiness firms and local governments, face each other in court. I compare outcomes of two cases—Hawaii and Arica, Chile—documenting

In this article, we use a Bourdieusian framework to theorize the relationship between cultural capital and legal consciousness, and in turn to consider how variation in legal consciousness contributes to the creation and maintenance of legal hegemony. We investigate how cultural capital shapes the ways people navigate situations that force them to mediate between state-conferred rights, on one hand

Our article provides an in-depth analysis of the framing processes and outcomes associated with a petition submitted by Inuit communities in the arctic on the human rights violations caused by climate change before the InterAmerican Commission of Human Rights in 2005. Drawing on semistructured interviews conducted in two different Inuit communities in Canada that have ties to the petition and with

This study uses an intersectional approach to examine the “paradox” that disadvantaged victims often mobilize the police, despite their distrust and lack of confidence in the law. Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (1994–2016) were analyzed using logistic regression to model the predicted probabilities of police notification by victims of crime. Economic disadvantage, as measured by

How, in a context of growing critiques of financialization, can law contribute to protecting the legitimacy of finance? This paper argues that the assignment of responsibilities between individuals and organizations plays a decisive role, using the recent Libor scandal as an empirical illustration. To do so, the paper offers a Foucauldian framework, the differential management of financial illegalisms

This Article presents a new framework for analyzing the development and implementation of disability law: the prism of the fear of “the disability con” — popular perceptions of fraud and fakery. We all encounter disability rights and accommodations in everyday life. However, people with disabilities pay a price for the legal recognition of their rights. People who park in disabled parking spots, use

This study empirically investigates how courts define sexuality of disabled persons in the absence of a formal right to sexuality. The focus of the study is tort law, a field ungoverned by direct disability rights legislation, assuming that tort law is the law of disablement as it concerns the transformative process of becoming disabled. The study investigates the types of damages courts have awarded

It has become commonplace within disability sociolegal scholarship to argue that, in the last 30 years, a new legal and policy approach to disability has emerged, leading to a paradigm shift from a social protection framework to an antidiscrimination model. Some authors have stressed, however, that the new model has not fully replaced the older social protection approach. Yet little is still known

The literature suggests that compliance with law is unlikely in areas of state weakness absent additional state capacity. Utilizing three novel data sets collected in adjacent districts in India and Nepal, this article demonstrates that weak states can significantly increase compliance by fostering accurate legal knowledge—something the literature often assumes is widespread. This assumption is problematic

The concept of critical mass has been invoked by social scientists and the Supreme Court in affirmative action decisions as a solution to problems related to underrepresentation of minority students in institutions of higher education. Little distinction is made by scholars between the Court's use of critical mass as a metaphor and its application in research as a mathematical concept. I use Agent‐Based

In 1997, Canada's youth custodial facilities held 3825 sentenced youths. Eighteen years later, this number was 527—an 86 percent reduction. Overall youth imprisonment (sentenced + pretrial detention) decreased by approximately 73 percent. This paper uses Canada's successful decarceration of youths to understand what might be learned about decarceration more broadly. By examining the reforms that transpired

This article explores the realization of the right to access in France, based on biographical interviews with people with mobility or visual impairments. I lay out an original theoretical framework for studying rights realization at the individual level. Although rights activation is the horizon of most rights consciousness research, I argue that rights do not necessarily need to be activated in order

This article identifies the factors that contribute to the successful implementation of intersectionality in European multilevel legal praxis through the analysis of the case B.S. v. Spain. Combining critical legal analysis of the main judicial documents with qualitative methodology from political science based on in‐depth interviews with key actors involved in the case, we uncover the obstacles and

Although the conventional wisdom holds that increasing the number of minority officers will enhance residents' perceptions of police and the criminal justice system, further systematic investigation of this hypothesis may be needed. Building on the group‐position thesis, the representative bureaucracy theory, and prior research, this study investigates whether perceived minority police presence within

The perception that a high court's decision is binding and final is a crucial prerequisite for its ability to settle political conflicts. Under what conditions are citizens more likely to accept controversial judicial rulings? Mass acceptance is determined, in part, by how rulings are framed during public debate. This paper takes a broad view of the strategies and actors that influence the discursive

This study demonstrates how legal compliance may be better achieved when organizations include individuals who will advocate for newly codified rights and related accommodations. To understand compliance with a new law and the rights it confers, this article examines as its case study the Lactation at Work law, which amends the Fair Labor Standards Act to mandate basic provisions for employees to express

Government transparency is a key component of democratic accountability. The U.S. Congress and the president have created multiple legislative avenues to facilitate executive branch transparency with the public. However, when the executive branch withholds requested information from the public, the federal judiciary has the power to determine whether agencies must release documents and information

Based on interviews with 100 members of mixed‐status families in Los Angeles, California, this article analyzes how U.S. citizen children practice and understand citizenship in the context of punitive laws targeting their loved ones. Participants' narratives of citizenship as privilege, responsibility, and guilt reveal that despite normative conceptions of citizenship as a universally equal status

This article examines how the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co‐operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention) plays a central role in justifying the institution of legal adoption. The Hague Adoption Convention has often been regarded as a response to the challenges that the “global situation” brings to adoption practice. Based on private international

In many countries, the law permits state authorities to detain noncitizens before deportation. Typically judicial decisions about preremoval detention must be made within a short period of time during which deportable noncitizens are held in police premises, and depending on the country detention may last just one month (e.g., France) or up to 18 months (the Netherlands). While previous research has

Scholars often argue that whereas unanimous rulings should boost public support for court decisions, dissents should fuel public opposition. Previous studies on public responses to U.S. Supreme Court decisions suggest that unanimity does in fact bolster support. However, a recent study has also found that dissents may increase support among opponents of a court decision by suggesting evidence of procedural

The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions’ policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation’s

The article identifies and analyses the development it labels the “quantitative turn” in international criminal law. Addressing the cumulative effect of the large numbers of witnesses in international processes, the article considers quantity as an integral, and substantively beneficial, component of the law's response to atrocity crimes. The article develops a theorized understanding of the relationship