Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T23:35:08.648Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Economy and Working Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

Robin Stryker
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Lauren B. Edelman’s Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights (2016) offers an empirically supported theory of legal endogeneity, explaining how managerialized ideas of compliance with employment discrimination legislation diffuse in organizational fields and shape judicial doctrine. Managerialization and legal endogeneity explain how and why equality-promoting civil rights legislation may do little to reduce workplace inequalities. This essay places Edelman’s theory within a broader terrain of opportunities and limits of law for promoting egalitarian change. Managerialization is not always detrimental to enhancing workplace race and gender equality. However, typically reinforcing logics of market capitalism and liberal legality often make it so, while blocking reforms countering judicial deference to managerialized compliance.

Type
Symposium on Legal Endogeneity: Lauren Edelman’s Working Law
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , November 2019 , pp. 1231 - 1240
Copyright
© 2019 American Bar Foundation 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Berrey, Ellen. The Enigma of Diversity: The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bliss, John. “Divided Selves: Professional Role Distancing among Students and New Lawyers during a Period of Market Crisis.” Law & Social Inquiry 42 (2017): 855–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence, and Kleugel, James R.. “Opposition to Race-Targeting: Self-Interest, Stratification Ideology or Racial Attitudes?” American Sociological Review 58 (1993): 443–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul J., and Powell, Walter W.. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields.” American Sociological Review 48 (1983): 147–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank. Inventing Equal Opportunity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank, and Sutton, John. “The Strength of a Weak State: The Rights Revolution and the Rise of Human Resources Management Divisions.” American Journal of Sociology 104 (1998): 441–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank R., Sutton, John R., Meyer, John W., and Scott, W. Richard. “Equal Opportunity Law and the Construction of Internal Labor Markets.” American Journal of Sociology 99 (1993): 396–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B. “Legal Environments and Organizational Governance: The Expansion of Due Process in the American Workplace.” American Journal of Sociology 94 (1990): 1401–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B. “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law.” American Journal of Sociology 97 (1992): 1531–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B.. Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B., and Stryker, Robin. “A Sociological Approach to Law and the Economy.” In Handbook of Economic Sociology, 2d ed., edited by Smelser, N. and Swedberg, R., 527–61. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Gamson, William A., and Modigliani, Andre. “The Changing Culture of Affirmative Action.” Research in Political Sociology 3 (1987): 137–77.Google Scholar
Kalev, Alexandra, Dobbin, Frank, and Kelly, Erin. “Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies.” American Sociological Review 71 (2006): 589–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleugel, James R., and Smith, Elliot R.. Beliefs about Inequality: Americans View of What Is and What Ought to Be. New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 1986.Google Scholar
Lempert, Richard, and Sanders, Joseph. An Invitation to Law and Social Science: Desert, Disputes, and Distribution. New York & London: Longman, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, John W., and Rowan, Brian. “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony.” American Journal of Sociology 83 (1977): 340–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Robert, and Bridges, William P.. Legalizing Gender Inequality: Courts, Markets and Unequal Pay for Women in America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pedriana, Nicholas, and Stryker, Robin. “Political Culture Wars 1960s Style: Equal Employment Opportunity-Affirmative Action Law and the Philadelphia Plan.” American Journal of Sociology 103 (1997): 633–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pedriana, Nicholas, and Stryker, Robin. “The Strength of a Weak Agency: Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Expansion of State Capacity, 1965-1971.” American Journal of Sociology 110 (2004): 709–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pedriana, Nicholas, and Stryker, Robin. “From Judicial Doctrine to Social Transformation: Comparing US Voting Rights, Equal Employment Opportunity and Fair Housing Legislation.” American Journal of Sociology 123 (2017): 86–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, William. Blaming the Victim, rev. updated ed. New York: Vintage, 1976.Google Scholar
Scheingold, Stuart A., and Sarat, Austin. Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism and Cause Lawyering. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Schleef, Debra. Managing Elites: Professional Socialization in Law and Business Schools. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.Google Scholar
Selznick, Philip. P. Law, Society and Industrial Justice. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1969.Google Scholar
Skrentny, John David. The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture and Justice in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stryker, Robin. “Limits on Technocratization of the Law: The Elimination of the National Labor Relations Board’s Division of Economic Research.” American Sociological Review 54 (1989): 341–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stryker, Robin. “Beyond History vs. Theory: Strategic Narrative and Sociological Explanation.” Sociological Methods and Research 24 (1996): 304–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stryker, Robin. “Legitimacy Processes as Institutional Politics: Implications for Theory and Research in the Sociology of Organizations.” Research in Sociology of Organizations 17 (2000a): 179–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stryker, Robin. “Government Regulation.” In Encyclopedia of Sociology 2d ed., vol 2., edited by Borgata, E. F. and Montgomery, R. J. V., 1089–1111. New York: MacMillan. 2000b.Google Scholar
Stryker, Robin. “Half Empty, Half Full or Neither? Law, Inequality and Social Change in Capitalist Democracies.” Annual Review of Law & Social Science 3 (2007): 69–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stryker, Robin, Docka-Filipek, Danielle, and Wald, Pamela. “Employment Discrimination Law and Industrial Psychology: Social Science as Social Authority and the Co-Production of Law and Science.” Law & Social Inquiry 37 (2012): 777–814.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stryker, Robin, Reynolds-Stenson, Heidi, and Frederico, Krista. “Family Responsibilities Discrimination, HR Work-Family Discourse and the Organizational Mediation of US Civil Rights Law.” LIEPP Working Paper No. 70, September 2017.Google Scholar
Talesh, Shauhin. “Legal Intermediaries: How Insurance Companies Construct the Meaning of Compliance with Anti-Discrimination Laws.” Law and Policy 37 (2015): 209–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max. Economy and Society, vol. 2, translated by Roth, Guenther and Wittich, Claus. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Yeager, Peter. The Limits of Law: The Public Regulation of Private Pollution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar

CASES CITED

County of Washington v. Gunther, 452 U.S. 161 (1981).Google Scholar