This article reports the results of a qualitative study of personal injury lawyers in Connecticut. Building on the results of an earlier study of lawyers in Florida, “Transforming Punishment Into Compensation: In the Shadow of Punitive Damages” (Baker 1998), the Connecticut study describes and explores the implications of professional norms and practices that govern tort settlement behavior. In particular, it examines the moral and practical barriers to collecting “blood money” (money from individual defendants, as opposed to liability insurance companies), as well as explanations for victims' apparent ability to partially trump the claims of subrogating workers' compensation and health insurance carriers. The results pose a challenge to the conventional understanding that tort law in action is a simpler, more streamlined version of tort law on the books. In addition, the results suggest that compensation and retribution figure far more prominently in tort law in action than does the deterrence emphasized in much of the theoretical and doctrinal literature.

An interesting irony of human rights is that the nation-states that are most susceptible to claims of human rights abuses may not be the most repressive nation-states. Pursuing this modern paradox, the purpose of this research is to determine the factors affecting the number of human rights claims brought by citizens in the international arena. We base our theory on an extension of theories of state strength and test it using a pooled time-series analysis of petitions filed with the European Commission on Human Rights between 1976 and 1993. We find that polity strength, measured through government openness to political minorities and participation in nongovernmental organizations, is positively linked to claims-making. In contrast, a state's tendency to act internationally, represented through participation in international governmental organizations, had a negative effect on the number of claims to the European Commission on Human Rights. Although levels of human rights abuse were positively associated with claims, other factors relating to political organization were equally or more important.

This article undertakes an empirical investigation into the development and persistence of college hate speech codes, asking why so many elite institutions of higher learning either retained or created speech policies that contradicted a national series of court cases. The method is both quantitative and qualitative, looking for broad patterns of response among the schools and also explaining why individual institutions did or did not comply with the court decisions. In the end, the article not only teases out the why of compliance decisions but also provides a greater understanding of the relationship between legal compliance and judicial impact.

This article evaluates two basic issues about dockets and case outcomes in American appellate courts. First, what determines the extent to which a court devotes its docket to civil cases involving asymmetrical power relationships between litigants? Second, in civil cases in which the “have-nots” are pitted against the “haves,” which forces determine the extent to which courts favor the less privileged? To answer these questions, we identify power asymmetric civil cases and the size of each court's docket by examining all 6,750 cases decided in state supreme courts in 1996. Results reveal that contextual factors are formidable in shaping both agenda space and win rates in civil disputes involving conflicts between advantaged and disadvantaged litigants. Institutional features of supreme courts and state court systems, the supply of legal resources, and public preferences all emerge as critical influences on the willingness of the states' highest courts to decide have/have not conflicts and on the ultimate disposition of these cases. In sum, a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which courts treat cases involving the disadvantaged and, more broadly, function as agents of redistributive change cannot be achieved without focusing beyond the ideological preferences of judges and the skill of the litigants.

This article presents results of the first randomized experimental evaluation of a legal assistance program for low-income tenants in New York City's Housing Court. The results demonstrate that the provision of legal counsel produces large differences in outcomes for low-income tenants in housing court, independent of the merits of the case. For example, only 22% of represented tenants had final judgments against them, compared with 51% of tenants without legal representation. Similarly large advantages for tenants with an attorney also were found in eviction orders and stipulations requiring the landlord to provide rent abatements or repairs. In addition, the results suggest that a program of legal assistance for low-income tenants would not increase significantly the number of appearances in court, although it would increase the number of days to final judgment. The program may enhance the efficiency of adjudication by reducing the number of motions filed, particularly post-judgment motions. Limitations and policy implications of the study are discussed.

This research explores the utility of Black's theory of law for explaining differences in homicide clearance rates across large cities in the United States. Using insights from the social disorganization literature, we develop and evaluate hypotheses regarding homicide clearance rates and aggregate measures of stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and alternative social control. Our findings support the argument that the rate of clearing homicide cases varies according to the social characteristics of the location where they occur. In particular, clearance rates were highest in cities marked by greater racial disparities in education, income, employment, and residence; greater residential stability; higher levels of educational attainment; higher expenditures for educational programs; and lower rates of homicide. We discuss the implications of our analysis for both the social disorganization literature and Black's theory, and we suggest directions for further inquiry into the relationship between structural conditions in urban areas and homicide clearance rates.

As a sociologist, I have always been envious of legal scholars' license to prescribe. They not only elucidate the ideas and interests behind the law, the ways it is applied, and the problems it confronts. Unencumbered by social scientists' reticence, they also tell us how to do better. The scholars represented in The Passions of Law argue in no uncertain terms that feminists should not appeal to disgust in attacking pornography, that levying more stringent penalties on “hate crimes” unjustly punishes opinions, that we should admit vengefulness as a motive for punishment, and that a wrongdoer's remorse should mitigate his penalty. Of course, the authors describe, analyze, and explain as well as recommend, and they do so in shrewd and enlightening ways. They also occasionally disagree strongly with each other's prescriptions. Those who argue that disgust is bad, shaming is good, and vengefulness is meritorious are countered by those who argue the opposite.

In her book Susan Hirsch explores how Swahili Muslim women in the Kenyan coastal cities of Mombasa and Malindi pursue marital disputes in local Kadhi's (Islamic) courts. Focusing in particular on the Malindi Kadhi's court, Hirsch highlights how Muslim women actively use legal processes to transform the religious and local norms that underlie their disadvantaged position in this Swahili community in postcolonial Kenya. In her microlevel study, based on empirical work featuring court records, court observations, and participation in everyday life in the community, the author offers a nuanced analysis highlighting the ways in which women are both constrained and empowered in this setting where customary law, religious law, Western law, and social norms concerning male and female speech intersect and interact. Although constraints derived from local and religious norms operate to urge compliance with social convention that projects women as persevering wives who should suffer in silence in relation to their pronouncing husbands, some women are, nonetheless, able to negotiate these stereotypes to circumvent male power. Hirsch's study details the process whereby some Muslim women who resist patriarchal norms are silenced while others succeed in transforming the perception of womanhood to their advantage in their disputes with their husbands.