Hostname: page-component-669899f699-ggqkh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-29T19:32:33.066Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Power of Second-Order Legal Consciousness: Authorities’ Perceptions of “Street Policy” and Welfare Fraud Enforcement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Spencer Headworth
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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 discretionary work of policy implementation, as fraud workers attempt to circumvent what they see as clients’ evasive maneuvers and act in ways they believe will influence clients’ thinking and behavior. Fraud workers’ second-order legal consciousness can also influence welfare law, when their perceptions of clients’ understandings and behaviors drive changes in written rules. Together, these effects demonstrate the power of authorities’ second-order legal consciousness to affect both law in action and law in books. Through documenting the impact of authorities’ second-order legal consciousness, this study fills an important gap in social scientific knowledge of how ongoing, dynamic processes of assessing others’ thinking and responding accordingly shape law-infused environments.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 320 - 353
Copyright
© 2020 Law and Society Association.

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

The author thanks the LSR reviewers for exceptional comments and critiques; Beth Hoffmann and John Robinson for helpful input on ideas and earlier drafts; participants in the “Legal Consciousness Across Contexts” panel at the 2019 meeting of the Law and Society Association for productive feedback; and Brian Kelly, Linda Renzulli, and Christie Sennott for advice.

References

Becker, Howard. 1998. Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about your Research While You're Doing it. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berrey, Ellen C., Hoffman, Steve G., and Nielsen, Laura Beth. 2012. “Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation.” Law & Society Rev 46: 1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berrey, Ellen, Nelson, Robert L., and Nielsen, Laura Beth. 2017. Rights on Trial: How Workplace Discrimination Law Perpetuates Inequality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bridges, Khiara M. 2017. The Poverty of Privacy Rights. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodkin, Evelyn Z. 1997. “Inside the Welfare Contract: Discretion and Accountability in State Welfare Administration.” Social Service Rev 71: 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornut St-Pierre, Pascale. 2019. “Investigating Legal Consciousness through the Technical Work of Elite Lawyers: A Case Study on Tax Avoidance.” Law & Society Rev 53: 323–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowan, Dave. 2004. “Legal Consciousness: Some Observations.” The Modern Law Rev 67: 928–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deterding, Nicole M., and Waters, Mary C. 2018. “Flexible Coding of in-Depth Interviews: A Twenty-First-Century Approach." Sociological Methods & Research Online first. DOI:0049124118799377.Google Scholar
Edin, Kathryn and Lein, Laura. 1997. Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Edin, Kathryn J. and Shaefer, H. Luke. 2015. $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Google Scholar
Engel, David M. and Munger, Frank W. 2003. Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans with Disabilities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ericson, Richard V. and Haggerty, Kevin D. 1997. Policing the Risk Society. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espeland, Wendy Nelson and Sauder, Michael. 2007. “Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds.” American J of Sociology 113: 1–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espeland, Wendy Nelson and Sauder, Michael. 2016. Engines of Anxiety: Academic Rankings, Reputation, and Accountability. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia and Silbey, Susan S. 1995. “Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative.” Law & Society Rev 29: 197–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewick, Patricia and Silbey, Susan S. 1998. The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewick, Patricia and Silbey, Susan S. 2003. “Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Law.” American J of Sociology 108: 1328–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felstiner, William, Abel, Richard, and Sarat, Austin. 1980. “The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, and Claiming.” Law & Society Rev 15: 631–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin. 2003. “Before or against the Law? Citizens’ Legal Beliefs and Expectations as Death Penalty Jurors.” Studies in Law, Politics and Society 27: 115–37.Google Scholar
Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin. 2004. Jurors’ Stories of Death: How America's Death Penalty Invests in Inequality. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fong, Kelley. 2018. “Concealment and Constraint: Child Protective Services Fears and Poor Mothers’ Institutional Engagement." Social Forces 97: 1785-1810.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy and Gordon, Linda. 1994. “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State.” Signs 19: 309–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilens, Martin. 1999. Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilliom, John. 2001. Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gilman, Michele E. 2008. “Welfare, Privacy, and Feminism.” University of Baltimore Law Forum 39: 1–25.Google Scholar
Gustafson, Kaaryn S. 2009. “The Criminalization of Poverty.” J of Criminal Law & Criminology 99: 643–716.Google Scholar
Gustafson, Kaaryn S. 2011. Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2004. The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Headworth, Spencer. 2019. “Getting to Know you: Welfare Fraud Investigation and the Appropriation of Social Ties.” American Sociological Rev 84: 171–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Headworth, Spencer and Ossei-Owusu, Shaun. 2017. “The Accused Poor.” Social Justice 44: 55–82.Google Scholar
Hetling, Andrea. 2011. “Welfare Caseworker Assessments and Domestic Violence Services: Findings from Administrative Data and Case Narratives.” Violence Against Women 17: 1046–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirsh, C. Elizabeth and Kornrich, Sabino. 2008. “The Context of Discrimination: Workplace Conditions, Institutional Environments, and Sex and Race Discrimination Charges.” American J of Sociology 113: 1394–432.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirsh, Elizabeth and Lyons, Christopher J. 2010. “Perceiving Discrimination on the Job: Legal Consciousness, Workplace Context, and the Construction of Race Discrimination.” Law & Society Rev 44: 269–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, Elizabeth A. 2003. “Legal Consciousness and Dispute Resolution: Different Disputing Behavior at Two Similar Taxicab Companies.” Law & Social Inquiry 28: 691–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, Everett C. 1971[1959]. “The Study of Occupations.” Pp. 283–97 in The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers. Chicago, IL: Aldine-Atherton.Google Scholar
Hull, Kathleen E. 2016. “Legal Consciousness in Marginalized Groups: The Case of LGBT People.” Law & Social Inquiry 41: 551–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jerolmack, Colin and Khan, Shamus. 2014. “Talk Is Cheap: Ethnography and the Attitudinal Fallacy.” Sociological Methods & Research 43: 178–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jussim, Lee, Harber, Kent D., Crawford, Jarret T., Cain, Thomas R., and Cohen, Florette. 2005. “Social Reality Makes the Social Mind: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Stereotypes, Bias, and Accuracy.” Interaction Studies 6: 85–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, Michael B. 2013[1989]. The Undeserving Poor: America's Enduring Confrontation with Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kohler-Hausmann, Julilly. 2007. “The Crime of Survival’: Fraud Prosecutions, Community Surveillance and the Original 'Welfare Queen.” J of Social History 41: 329–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler-Hausmann, Julilly. 2015. “Welfare Crises, Penal Solutions, and the Origins of The 'Welfare Queen.” J of Urban History 41: 756–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leo, Richard A. 2008. Police Interrogation and American Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lerman, Amy E. and Weaver, Vesla M. 2014. Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsky, Michael. 2010[1980]. Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, Donald. 2008. An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape the Markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
MacQueen, Kathleen M., McLellan, Eleanor, Kay, Kelly, and Milstein, Bobby. 1998. “Codebook Development for Team-Based Qualitative Analysis.” Cultural Anthropology Methods 10: 31–6.Google Scholar
Manning, Peter K. 1977. Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, Anna-Maria. 2003. “Injustice Frames, Legality, and the Everyday Construction of Sexual Harrassment.” Law and Social Inquiry 28: 659–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Jennifer. 2002. Qualitative Researching, Second ed.. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Maynard-Moody, Steven and Musheno, Michael. 2003. Cops, Teachers, Counselors: Stories from the Front Lines of Public Service. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCann, Michael. 1994. Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mead, George Herbert. 1967[1934]. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. 1990. Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Moskos, Peter. 2008. Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Laura Beth. 2000. “Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment.” Law & Society Rev 34: 1055–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ocen, Priscilla A. 2012. “The New Racially Restrictive Covenant: Race, Welfare, and the Policing of Black Women in Subsidized Housing.” UCLA Law Rev 59: 1540–82.Google Scholar
Pound, Roscoe. 1910. “Law in Books and Law in Action.” American Law Rev 44: 12–36.Google Scholar
Pugh, Allison J. 2013. “What Good Are Interviews for Thinking about Culture? Demystifying Interpretive Analysis.” American J of Cultural Sociology 1: 42–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regev-Messalem, Shiri. 2014. “Trapped in Resistance: Collective Struggle through Welfare Fraud in Israel.” Law & Society Rev 48: 741–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, Sally. 2015. “Unearthing Bureaucratic Legal Consciousness: Government Officials’ Legal Identification and Moral Ideals.” International J of Law in Context 11: 299–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, Edwin J. 1920. “The Price System and Social Management.” American J of Sociology 26: 162–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandelowski, Margarete. 2008. “Theoretical Saturation.” pp. 875–76 in The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Methods, edited by Lisa M. Given. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin. 1990. “'…the Law Is all Over’: Power, Resistance, and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor.” Yale J of Law & the Humanities 2: 343–79.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Silbey, Susan S. 2005. “After Legal Consciousness.” Annual Rev of Law and Social Science 1: 323–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skolnick, Jerome H. 1966. Justice without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Slobogin, Christopher. 2003. “The Poverty Exception to the Fourth Amendment.” Florida Law Rev 55: 391–412.Google Scholar
Small, Mario. 2009. “'How Many Cases Do I Need?': On Science and the Logic of Case Selection in Field-Based Research.” Ethnography 10: 5–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soss, Joe. 1999. “Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and Political Action.” American Political Science Rev 93: 363–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soss, Joe, Fording, Richard C., and Schram, Sanford F. 2011. Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, Deborah A. 1984. The Disabled State. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, Forrest. 2016a. “Becoming 'Copwise’: Policing, Culture, and the Collateral Consequences of Street-Level Criminalization.” Law & Society Rev 50: 279–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, Forrest. 2016b. Down, Out, and under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tavory, Iddo and Timmermans, Stefan. 2014. Abductive Analysis: Theorizing Qualitative Research. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, William I. and Thomas, Dorothy Swaine. 1928. The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana. 2003. “'Which Side Are you on?' Uses of the Everyday in Sociolegal Scholarship.” PoLaR: Political and Legal Anthropology Rev 26: 86–98.Google Scholar
Watkins-Hayes, Celeste. 2009. The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, Robert S. 1994. Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Winchester, Daniel and Green, Kyle. 2019. “Talking your Self into it: How and when Accounts Shape Motivation for Action.” Sociological Theory 37: 257–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yin, Robert K. 2014. Case Study Research, 5th ed.. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.Google Scholar
Young, Kathryne M. 2014. “Everyone Knows the Game: Legal Consciousness in the Hawaiian Cockfight.” Law & Society Rev 48: 499–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Kathryne M. 2016. “Criminal Behavior as an Expression of Identity and Form of Resistance: The Sociolegal Significance of the Hawaiian Cockfight.” California Law Rev 104: 1159–205.Google Scholar