The following two themes emerge in an investigation of legal culture in the United States: (1) a denigration of rights and yet (2) a persistent notion that rights are important and should be salvaged. The discourse of rights continues to act as an important frame of reference throughout legal culture. The open-ended nature of rights discourse plus the powerful cultural resonance of rights encourage the use of rights talk to frame issues even when the framers are severely critical of the use of rights. Even if many people agree, however, there are reasons to assess this consensus negatively.

The short history of environmental institutions and policies in Europe is marked by their radical reorientation. While environmental protection devices were initially conceived in the 1970s by using the classical model of the “watchdog state,” they underwent a shift during the 1990s: the ineffectiveness produced by bureaucratic constraints served as a pretext to hasten the disengagement of the state to the benefit of a regulation negotiated on the basis of financial incentives. The management of environmental issues now relies on the construction of an international market of sustainable development (or of a “rights to pollute” market, similar to that which has been established by the Kyoto protocol). The emergence and reconstruction of this field of expertise can be seen as a kind of microcosm of the perpetually unfinished Tower of Babel that is the European construction. One of the merits of this subject matter is to highlight the internal and external dynamics that have favored the success of a neoliberal counterattack.

The death penalty debate in the United States has recently undergone a fundamental shift. The possibility of executing the innocent has emerged as some abolitionists' most salient argument, displacing debates over such issues as fairness, deterrence, and cost. Innocence has managed to move to the fore of the debate in part because of the success of death penalty opponents in attaching epistemological certainty to one particular category of postconviction exonerations, those vouched for by the authority of DNA evidence. We suggest that such moves are primarily rhetorical because, while DNA evidence may be more accurate and reliable than other forensic science, it still fundamentally probabilistic in nature and is prone to uncertainties at all stages of its production. Yet, because of the certainty attached to DNA evidence in public discourse, it can be used as a lever with which to challenge law's claims to truth‐making authority, and to undermine public trust in the death penalty. A few abolitionists and other scholars have expressed misgivings about the abolitionist embrace of the innocence argument. We push this concern further, suggesting that both abolitionists and death penalty reformers, who seek to promote a “scientific” death penalty centered on DNA evidence, draw upon a mythologized notion of “science” as a producer of epistemic certainty.

Toronto prides itself both on being diverse and on celebrating rather than merely tolerating diversity. Urban diversity has been studied by demographers, sociologists, and planners, but sociolegal analyses of the negotiation of diversity are scarce. The study described here has three elements: a study of the Toronto Licensing Tribunal, a challenge to the property standards by‐law, and a campaign to reform the rules governing street food. The key substantive finding of the research is that municipal legal processes, in a city that takes pride in its diversity, still work to effect and naturalize distinctly ethnocentric norms. The content of (some) norms is subject to revision but the normative power of law as such remains unchallenged.

Methodologically, the article, inspired by Bruno Latour and Actor Network Theory, shows the usefulness of treating local legal processes as a series of networks in which nonhuman objects (such as weeds, courtroom Bibles, and hot dogs) can sometimes be protagonists of legal dramas rather than mere objects.

Based on participation observations and interviews with petitioners and petition officials in Chinese courts, this article analyzes how the petitioning discourse is organized and how it influences the dispute resolution process. It finds that the discourses between the petitioners and the petition officials are mismatched. The petitioners fight to frame their disputes in legal terms, while the petition officials use a “channeling discourse” to divert the petitioners to legal or extralegal institutions. The two types of discourse barely confront each other; nor are the substantive issues seriously debated. Since being channeled into other institutions does not resolve their disputes, petitioners start calling their petitioning experiences as injurious, blaming officials, and making new claims. Disputes are thus reproduced. The research sheds light on the petitioners’ legal consciousness and the operation of the petition system in China, and explores the contextual reasons why the phenomenon of mismatched discourses occurs in China.

This article advocates for ethnographic and historical study of the political roots of corruption. Focusing on informal economies of Belarusian universities, it reexamines two theoretical propositions about corruption in autocracies. The first proposition is that authoritarianism breeds bureaucratic corruption; the second is that autocrats grant disloyal subjects corruption opportunities in exchange for political compliance. Using qualitative data, the author finds that autocracies can generate favorable as well as unfavorable preconditions for bureaucratic corruption. The author argues that lenient autocratic governance, characterized by organizational decoupling, creates favorable conditions for bureaucratic corruption. In contrast, consolidated autocracy, defined by rigid organizational controls, is unfavorable to such corruption. The author also concludes that in autocracies, disloyal populations may be cut off from rather than granted opportunities for bureaucratic corruption. These findings suggest that the relationship between autocratic governance and corruption is more complex than current studies are able to reveal due to their methodological limitations.

In this study I explore the theoretical and linguistic implications of the Kennedy Smith rape trial, using transcriptions of real live testimony as data. I examine theoretically how the logic of inconsistency in trial testimony of the victim and other witnesses activates an interaction among language, law, and culture as an epistemological practice of domination. In microlinguistic detail, I examine the categorization of action, linguistic ideologies, and situated rhythms of legal language through which our sexual identities are constituted to create an apparent inconsistency in the victim's account. Looking at the law-in-action, I hope to show how social actors use language and culture to create meaning in their legal interaction.

Most studies of the legal profession, done in metropolitan settings, have indicated that the profession is characterized by deep divisions associated with varying practice patterns, professional status, and orientation. But the sources of division within the bar include more than the specialization and stratification that are typical of the bar in metropolitan settings. Community context also appears to be a source of division. It determines not only the character of a lawyer's cases and clients but also the manner in which practice is conducted. This comparison of practice patterns in Missouri of rural lawyers with those in a middle-sized city (Springfield) revealed that while the small town context protects the bar from the centrifugal forces of stratification found in larger settings, it also has elements that challenge the professional independence of the practitioner. The small town or rural practitioner is very much a part of the local life, and thus local opinion and values have a salience for practice patterns not typical of larger settings. In addition, these rural lawyers are less likely to be engaged exclusively in law practice.

Overall, the data suggest that the legal profession is divided not only by specialization and its attendant internal stratification but also by the size and character of the local context. In contrast to the view that the profession is a homogeneous professional subculture, we found that the bar may better be thought of as a rather loose-knit group with tenuous collegial ties whose professionalism is under constant challenge from the community in which law practice occurs.

Drawing on the career of Philip Corboy, this article examines the construction of the plaintiffs' personal injury bar in the second half of the 20th century. Through a relational biography based on Mr. Corboy's career, we look at the development of this subprofession in the context of the sociopolitical environment within which Mr. Corboy and his peers operated, the social capital they possessed, and the particular strategies they used as they worked to establish both a professional and market niche. This analysis shows how and why Mr. Corboy and his peers constructed a thriving subprofession that is characterized by a unique blend of working-class ideology, trial craft, professional bar leadership, Democratic politics, local philanthropy, and a market referral system—all of which reinforce the dominance and prestige of its own elite.

This article examines the rules and practices of waiting in line as a system of informal order, showing that despite its reputation for drudgery, the queue offers rich insights about social norms and the psychology of cooperation. The article begins by investigating the implicit customs of physical waiting in line, uncovering the surprisingly complex unwritten rules (and exceptions) that give queues stability even in the absence of legal governance or state enforcement. Yet the prevailing norms literature typically explains informal order by reference to close-knit groups that can impose sanctions on violators of extralegal rules. This raises a puzzle: Why do queue norms repeatedly produce informal, yet reliable, order among total strangers unlikely to interact again? This article answers this question by looking to social-psychological research showing that people tend to be strong reciprocators rather than selfish utility maximizers. This model makes sense of both our tendency to defer to line norms as well as the disproportionate sanctions with which defectors from these norms meet.

In this article I reconsider Hopi tradition as jurisdiction—reflexive moments of Hopi legal discourse that orient to the limits of Hopi sovereignty, even as they presuppose its power. I explore these themes in two significant moments of Hopi political history. First, I consider the uses of tradition in the creation of the contemporary Hopi tribe through the field notes of the US agent charged with drafting the 1936 Hopi Constitution. Then I consider more contemporary uses of tradition in recent Hopi tribal court cases that extended judicial power over matters reserved for local village leadership. Both instances suggest efforts to potentialize tribal power even as they orient explicitly to the limits of that authority. These traditions are thus, ironically, understood not as replaying Euro‐American logics of nationalist totalities, but as indigenous sociopolitical actions that unsettle static representations of Hopi cultural identity and the sovereignty claimed through them.

Islamic law changed radically in the last century and a half. It was codified and limited to the domain of personal and family law in almost all majority and minority Muslim states. The argument of this article is that this remarkable change in Islamic law began in the colonial state. Islamic law, as it functions within postcolonial Muslim states, is a product of negotiations between colonial and local elites over law, religion, culture, ethnicity, and the identity of the Muslim subject. In the case of colonial Malaya, this resulted in a codified, institutionalized legal system within a colonial state, which was critical in constructing Malay ethnic and religious identities and interpretations of Islam that prevail today.

Problem‐solving courts (drug courts, community courts, domestic violence courts, and mental health courts), unlike traditional courts, attempt to get at the root of the individual and social problems that motivate criminal behavior. Theoretical understandings of problem‐solving courts are mostly Foucauldian; proponents argue that these new institutions employ therapeutic techniques that encourage individuals to self‐engineer in ways that subtly increase state power. The Foucauldian approach captures only some elements of problem‐solving courts and does not fully theorize the revolution in justice that these courts present. Problem‐solving courts, domestic violence courts in particular, orient not just around individual change but also around social change and cultural transformation. Combining the Foucauldian idea of a therapeutic state (as developed by James Nolan) with an understanding of the deliberative democratic mechanisms of larger‐scale structural transformation (found in Habermas and others) leads to a more balanced and empirically open orientation to the actual motivations, goals, and achievements of problem‐solving courts.

This article uses the case of Sudan to show how authoritarian regimes benefit from embracing international arbitration, allowing them to maintain domestic control and attract foreign investment. International arbitration ensures that foreign‐investment disputes are resolved outside of domestic purview, obviating the need for nondemocratic states to create independent courts. Research on judicial politics in authoritarian regimes has largely overlooked those private and extra‐judicial pathways—international arbitration tribunals—that illiberal regimes have been taking. Similarly, research in international commercial law has neglected domestic politics, overlooking arbitration's consequences for domestic stakeholders. Promoting international arbitration without paying heed to its side effects can unwittingly help illiberal regimes, particularly in weak states, to continue to repress their judiciaries and curtail the development of domestic legal institutions and the rule of law.

This article examines the role of racial identity in the configuration of opinions about the police. We argue that racial identity links social context to individual valuations of law enforcement, moderating the association between specific encounters and general views on police legitimacy and effectiveness. These propositions are assessed using data from a sample of 451 Black and Latino/a youth in New York City. Findings lend partial support for the hypothesis that, for youth with a strong racial/ethnic identity, the detrimental consequences of more “coercive” stops and stops seen as disrespectful are amplified for valuations of legitimacy but not of effectiveness. We discuss these findings in the context of emerging work connecting race, law, and procedural justice at the micro- and macrolevels.

In United States v. Fordice (1992), the Supreme Court recognized the effects of past racial discrimination against historically black institutions (HBIs) in Mississippi. One goal of the 500 million settlement is for HBIs to enroll “other-race” students. Although the impetus to attract white students falls on HBIs, the response of Mississippi's white community is pivotal. In a series of focus groups with white students, we inquired into the factors that might motivate them to attend an HBI. The data demonstrate that most white students strongly resist the notion of attending a predominately black institution. They articulate such reasons as perceived poor academic quality, social discomfort, anticipated discrimination, and parental disapproval. Further, they cannot imagine how HBIs might recruit white students and generally doubt that improved programs and facilities would achieve this goal. The current framework surrounding Fordice does not consider sufficiently the importance of these racial attitudes. We thus conclude with a discussion of the likely difficulties in implementing the Court's decision.

While research on legal mobilization shows how social movements contribute to the definition and implementation of rights, it remains excessively centered on litigation to the detriment of administrative rights enforcement. This article maps out how street-level bureaucracies impact rights enforcement by distinguishing between allocation, access, and process, and analyzes how social movements intervene in these three aspects. It then focuses on allocation, using the case of French disability policy to analyze the forms of advocacy deployed by movement actors who take part in the rights allocation process at the local level. The article argues that conformity to institutional norms derives not so much from a pressure to conform as from the knowledge and experience of the limited means locally available to make rights effective. Further, it shows how advocacy is reframed from the defense of individual claims to a role of scrutiny and control of the bureaucratic allocation of rights.

This article seeks to show the way that professional competition, including academic competition, about the definitions and categories of dispute resolution transforms the field of business disputing. It draws on extensive interviews and focuses on two case studies. The first is “international commercial arbitration,” and the second is the ADR movement, especially “mediation,” in the United States. In each case, the article shows that there is competition about what can legitimately be termed arbitration or mediation; that there is competition more generally for the business of business disputing; that the competition is not played on a level playing field; that competitors compete in terms of the symbolic capital that they have to offer, which is changing over time and in relation to what others possess; and that the (always provisional) results are important for transforming the “rules of the game” for governing business transactions. The internal transformations in the field of business disputing also take place in close conjunction with transformations that can be seen as outside, above all, the international restructuring of business relations in the 1970s and 1980s.