For a legal anthropologist interested in how different agents and forms of governance shape projects of sexual humanitarianism, the strategies that US-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use in their attempts to reframe an Indian anti-prostitution law as an anti-trafficking instrument generate broader conceptual questions. How do Indian NGOs articulate donor-driven concerns with the postcolonial socio-legal framework within which they work? What impact do they seek to have on the law, legal system, and legal actors? What, in turn, happens to formal law, which is already shaped by a complex history of legal concerns, moral panics, and NGO intervention (itself authorized by law) in this context? How do law and NGOs shape each other across anti-prostitution and anti-trafficking projects in the overlapping contexts of postcoloniality, globalization, neoliberalism, and sexual humanitarianism in India? How might one explore these intersections and relationships methodologically? I show how ethnography at the intersection of anti-prostitution law and anti-trafficking NGOs illuminates: (1) law’s imbrication in a broader, long-standing, and ever-expanding field of governmental action on prostitution; (2) how NGOs and legal actors act, in tension and in collaboration, upon the perceived “problem” of prostitution; and (3) how anti-trafficking NGOs and anti-prostitution law co-constitute each other as they shape contested meanings around prostitution.

Susanna L. Blumenthal’s Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Legal Culture (2016) is a history of the self in nineteenth-century America. When judges considered a person’s criminal responsibility or civil capacity in court, they created a body of legal and political thought about the self, society, the economy, and American democracy. This essay uses Blumenthal’s book to explore recent work on law and the mind in Britain and North America, and argues that abstract questions about free will, the self, and the mind were part of the everyday jurisprudence of the nineteenth century. Debates about responsibility were also debates about the psychological consequences of capitalism and the borders of personhood and citizenship at a time of rapid economic, political, and social change.

This article considers the organizations, financial patrons, and lawyers involved in two significant campaign finance cases decided by the Roberts Court: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. The research indicates that these elements of the support structures for litigation on both sides of these cases, like the justices to whom they direct their advocacy, fall into well-defined opposing and partisan camps. It also suggests that strategic case selection on the challengers' side, the diversity of organizations supporting their positions, their network and coordination, and a simple and powerful frame around which to rally may have contributed to their success and to the Roberts Court's fundamental reshaping of campaign finance doctrine.

Governments, like business organizations, are exposed to risks of many kinds and have a wide range of options how to respond–from bearing the full risk themselves to obtaining full insurance coverage. The author discusses some of the traditional approaches to governmental risk management in the light of new and increasing risks–such as the liability risk–and the growing sophistication of risk management methods. He notes in particular how a government's risk management decisions differ from those of a business organization because of the unique characteristics of government entities: perpetual existence; taxing power; the need to prevent nepotism, bribery, and corruption in government administration; and political mandates and pressures of all kinds. These forces account for restrictive procurement rules and for various forms of “self-insurance” arrangements. The author finds, among other things, that in most states the rules have not kept pace with the multiplication of risks and the development of new risk management and insurance techniques, and that small and medium municipalities, especially, suffer from inadequate access to sound risk management services. On the basis of an examination of European municipal risk management practices, the author then suggests as an appropriate solution the formation of special mutual insurance organizations for municipal governments, controlled and administered by local government officials.

Explanations of altruism remain fragmented across disciplinary lines and focus heavily on phenomena such as philanthropy, the nonprofit sector, and volunteering outside the workplace. Yet numerous professions, including law, claim a duty of service that calls on their members to volunteer. Using a mixed methods approach that draws on thirty interviews and a survey of 845 lawyers, the authors develop an integrated framework on altruism to account for how volunteering takes place in the course of law practice. The analysis reveals psychological traits, collective norms, exchange relationships, and organizational dimensions that shape lawyers’ volunteering. In particular, a cultural norm endorsing volunteer efforts is a powerful driver of volunteering legal services. At the same time, organizational features, such as time constraints, condition cultural norms to hinder volunteering, while business opportunities for client recruitment condition cultural norms to foster volunteering. We conclude with directions for advancing our integrated approach to altruism in the context of lawyers’ professional service.

The law often lays down mandatory rules, from which the parties may deviate in favor of one party but not the other. Examples include the invalidation of high-liquidated damages and the unenforceability of excessive noncompete clauses in employment contracts. In these cases, the law may substitute the invalid term with a moderate arrangement, with a punitive arrangement that strongly favors the protected party, or with a minimally tolerable arrangement (MTA), which preserves the original term as much as is tolerable. This article revisits the choice between the various substitutes. Based on theoretical analysis and five new empirical studies (N = 2,089), it argues that the incidence of MTAs should be rather limited. It demonstrates that people find moderate substitute arrangements more attractive than the alternatives. It also points to two overlooked incentive effects of the substitute arrangement (in addition to its impact on the drafting of contracts). First, the applicable substitute strongly influences customers’ inclination to challenge excessive contract terms once a dispute arises. Second, when the invalidation of an excessive term is discretionary, the applicable substitute can affect decision makers’ inclination to invalidate excessive clauses in the first place.

In 2016, Colombia’s Constitutional Court recognized the Atrato River as the first water body in Latin America to have its own rights. This article interrogates the historical roots of the judicial decision declaring the river a rights holder. Drawing on my long-term engagement with social organizations as an activist, lawyer, and then researcher, I illuminate the influence of Black people from the Atrato River in the transformation of law in at least three areas: ethnic territorial rights, transitional justice, and river rights. To do so, I combine interdisciplinary theoretical critique with socio-legal research using community-based and autoethnographic approaches to trace the community methods and historical practices of political contestation deployed along the rivers. Thus, I conceptualize how an organic and distinctive style of claiming and creating rights has been constructed in the basin. Moreover, by listening to the voices of the riverine representatives, I argue that the river is a nonhuman existence that has participated in the processes of rights-making in conjunction with local communities and a broader mosaic of allied actors. However, I also outline how legal systems still function to overlook crucial socio-legal claims of marginalized and resistant communities.

In the context of a national movement to defund police departments, many American cities are starting to reimagine public safety, as activists demand new practices that maintain safety while minimizing harm, as well as ensuring accountability when harms occur. Drawing on Everyday Peace Indicators methodologies, we argue that “community-centered” measurement, combined with researcher-practitioner partnerships, can help move both researchers and policymakers toward a more meaningful approach to policy design and evaluation. However, the application of community-centered measurement to the context of American policing raises important theoretical and practical concerns—in particular, the question of how community is defined, and who gets to define it. In this article, we ask: how do we define “community” in participatory research contexts where the concept of community is overlapping and contested? Using the example of a recent study carried out in the City of Oakland, we illustrate the complexities of applying a community-centered measurement process to the case of public safety and, more broadly, to police reform in American cities. We conclude with a discussion of both the benefits and limitations of our own approach, as well as a set of considerations for those engaging in participatory research.

This article explores the plasticity of rights by examining how the US government promised and revoked naturalization rights and military benefits from Filipino colonial soldiers who served on behalf of the United States in World War II. Rarely have legal scholars of the US military, citizenship, and the welfare state addressed the rights of colonial subjects. Drawing on data collected from six libraries and archives, the Congressional Record, and oral histories, I document how key actors in the US government dismantled the rights of Filipino soldiers. I find that colonialism, war, and a rapidly changing geopolitical situation—forthcoming Philippine independence—allowed members of the US Congress and the administrator of Veterans Affairs to dismantle rights. By arguing that the Philippines was not a colony, that colonial subjects were not entitled to equal treatment, and that Filipino veterans were not US military, members of the US executive and legislative branches casually eroded rights. US state actors thus were able to claim that Filipino veterans’ rights were merely cumbersome and expensive foreign aid. This case suggests that rights are more malleable during times of state transition.

Trademark law protects distinctive signs of products against unauthorized uses. It is a legal tool to enhance market efficiency by conveying information about the origin of goods to consumers. Trademarks are also carriers of cultural information about the manufacturers, their products, and their message to the consumers. Thus, trademarks provide an unexpected reflection on society. This article explores the history of trademark law in Mandate Palestine, from the enactment of the first law to the end of the mandate (1922–48) in three cumulative avenues. First, a legal history analysis is provided, which seeks to understand why the British imposed trademark law at the time and manner they chose and how it was received by the local communities. Second, an empirical study of trademark data is given that reveals why the original trademark registry did not survive and how it was reconstructed for the current study. Trademark data offer an understudied and rich resource indicating economic changes and the reception of the law. Third, a semiotic analysis is provided that examines the trademarks themselves, focusing on local trademarks. Nationality is the common thread in these inquiries. The research reveals the differential reception of the British trademark law, with the Jewish population embracing it and the Arab-Palestinian population being much less receptive to it. The Jewish traders often used trademarks to convey national Zionist messages.

The American Bar Association is considering a revision of its Code of Professional Responsibility. One revision deals specifically with lawyers whose clients are organizations; it attempts to delineate the ethical responsibilities of such lawyers when they discover an employee or a member of one of their clients is engaged in wrongdoing on the organization's behalf. Because the proposal suggests that corporate counsel may be justified in public disclosure of the wrongdoing when the organization itself fails to rectify the problem, it has sparked much controversy in the profession and much speculation as to whether and when corporate counsel will “blow the whistle.” The article offers a sociological perspective on the act of a corporate counsel's public disclosure of organizational wrongdoing. The act of disclosure is treated as a social behavior, the likelihood of which is increased or decreased by a number of factors including the attorney's awareness of the wrongdoing, the attorney's orientations to the larger profession, the structure of the professional practice setting within which the counsel is located, and the supports for disclosure offered by the legal profession through its formal organizations. These factors are described and then combined into a general predictive model of disclosure by corporate counsel. A concluding discussion of the general ramifications of the proposed revisions focuses on the social implications of the attorney-client privilege, in which the client is as unique an actor as is the large organization.

The people's sense of what is good and right is both the ultimate source and the ultimate strength of the rules that govern a democratic society. If there is a major discrepancy between that sense and the rules, the rules and those who cling to them will eventually disappear.

A long accepted canon of professional ethics forbids a lawyer to appear in a particular matter in the dual role of advocate and witness for his client. As Disciplinary Rule 5-101(B) of the American Bar Association's Code of Professional Responsibility states:

The American Bar Association's Commission on Evaluation of Professional Standards has proposed the replacement of the existing Code of Professional Responsibility with its Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The public discussion of the Model Rules has focused largely on specific provisions, such as the proposed requirement that lawyers disclose clients' confidences in some circumstances and the exhortation that all lawyers engage in pro bono activity. Another proposed change, however, would at least on its face seem to be more significant for the future of the bar's professional standards and its self-concept than for the resolution of particular professional dilemmas. That change is the proposed elimination of about half the current Code of Professional Responsibility: those provisions included under the rubric “Ethical Considerations.”