The role of the bench as the sponsoring organization of trial judges largely remains a mystery to political science. Borrowing from organizational theory the metaphor of loose coupling, a characteristic of many American political institutions, this article explores the tension between elements of loose and tight coupling within the sponsoring organization of judges (the bench) and the consequences of that tension for the distribution of services to clients of trial courts. The article identifies three sets of consequences: (1) The locus and style of innovation is acutely circumscribed by these tensions; in the court that is studied, assertive leadership and punctuated change are less likely than conciliar leadership and incremental change. (2) The juxtaposition of loosely and tightly coupled elements promote responsiveness to powerful clientele interests. (3) Responsiveness to powerful clientele interests leads to a distribution of resources that short-changes less influential clients of the court.

Drawing on interviews with birth and adoptive parents who have remained in contact with each other following placement of an adopted child, this article examines the dynamic of motherhood that emerges in these relationships. Moving back and forth from legal and social event to women's subjective experiences of these events, it argues that open adoption constitutes a “potential space” where two familiar “truths” about motherhood—as an experience of identity and of connection, and as an experience of contingency and separation—converge in powerful ways. Focusing on the double vision of mothers who feel both “real” and “not real” at the same time, it explores the tendency of open adoption to resolve into familiar dichotomies of nature and law and its potential to produce new subjectivities that defy legal categories. The article suggests that analysis of the sociolegal world and of the possibilities for its transformation must work along the unstable boundary of different subjective worlds, moving between them to expose the exclusions and injustices upon which each is premised.

This study examines the sociolegal underpinnings of the “temporary help” relationship as one kind of contingent work arrangement and explores how it became institutionalized in the post-World War II United States. While the American literature on contingent work suggests its tremendous growth has been merely a result of changing “human resource” strategies on the part of business managers, the focus here is on the specific role played by courts, state legislatures, and government administrative bodies in ratifying the temporary help arrangement as legal and legitimate. The article details the obscure history of the campaign waged by temporary help firms to win their claim as the legal employers of workers they send out to client firms, a central premise of the arrangement. It shows that statutory and policy changes supporting the increased use of “temporary work” were in place by the early 1970s, in time for its expanded use to play a key role in the restructuring of U.S. employment relations since that time.

This article examines the recent failure of formal constitutional amendments in the United States and Canada by closely analyzing the institutional environment in which constitutional modification takes place. I focus first on the instrumental objectives of constitutional reform to develop an institutional design model of constitutional modification and identify the structural factors that affect the level of controversy generated by proposed amendments. I then revisit the failed ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to demonstrate more explicitly how these institutional factors affected the amendment's fate. Finally, I extend the analysis by undertaking a comparative case study of the recent politics of constitutional modification in Canada. In particular, I focus on the failure of comprehensive constitutional change between 1987 and 1992. I argue that the same institutional design model, which focuses on institutional rigidity, interpretive flexibility, and litigation potential, enhances our ability to understand both the U.S. and Canadian cases of amendment failure.

There is little research on the relationship between adolescent motherhood and the criminality of the children. Data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development reveals that children from large families who were born to women who began childbearing early are at greatest risk of criminality. Three alternative explanations for this relationship are explored—the life course-immaturity account, the persistent poor parenting-role model account, and the diminished resources account. We find no evidence supporting the first account, but in various ways the analysis provides credible support for the latter two accounts, which themselves are not mutually exclusive.

In a reanalysis of the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment, we examine whether the use of fair procedures on the part of police officers called to the scene of a domestic assault inhibits subsequent assault. Consistent with expectations, we found that procedural justice did suppress subsequent violence, even in the face of adverse outcomes. When police acted in a procedurally fair manner when arresting assault suspects, the rate of subsequent domestic violence was significantly lower than when they did not. Moreover, suspects who were arrested and perceived that they were treated in a procedurally fair manner had subsequent assault rates that were as low as those suspects given a more favorable outcome (warned and then released without arrest). The suppression effect of procedural justice did not depend on the personal characteristics of suspects.