Using survey data from a sample of white, black, and Hispanic incarcerated females (N = 554), we examine if the theoretically hypothesized and empirically demonstrated relationship between procedural justice and obligation to obey the law is substantiated among a sample of offenders and explore the impact that sharing the race/ethnicity of the defense attorney and prosecutor in their most recent conviction has on female inmates' perceptions of court procedural justice and their perceived obligation to obey the law. The findings reveal that female offenders who perceive the courts as more procedurally just report a significantly greater obligation to obey the law. In addition, white female inmates who had a white prosecutor were significantly more likely to perceive the courts as procedurally just. Non-whites, though, perceive the courts as more fair if they encountered a minority prosecutor regardless of whether the prosecutor was black or Hispanic.

In contrast to a recent survey conducted by Miller and Simpson, two earlier surveys of adults, one conducted in 1972 and the other in 1982, reported that women scored higher than men on measures of what Grasmick and Bursik recently have called perceived threats of shame and embarrassment, as well as legal sanctions, for violating the law. Hagan's power-control theory, coupled with trends in labor force and household composition, is used to predict a decline over time in the magnitude of the effect of sex on perceived threats of sanctions. The 1982 survey is merged with an identical one conducted in 1992 to determine whether men and women have become more alike in their perception of these threats. Evidence supporting the predictions from power-control theory is found for theft but not for assault. The findings are discussed in the context of various theories and previous research concerning gender, crime, and social control.

Some of us see law as largely marginal to American life (see, e.g., Macaulay, 1984), but other colleagues assert that law constitutes society. One position does not contradict the other because we are talking about different things. Cases, statutes, and enforcement agencies very seldom directly influence everyday life. At the same time, law is an important part of culture. Despite many debates (see, e.g., Hall, 1977; Harris, 1980; Ortner, 1984), legal culture affects everyday life in important ways. At the very least, it provides a vocabulary with which we rationalize our actions to others and ourselves. As Geertz (1983: 173, 232) insists, “law is not a bounded set of norms …, but part of a distinctive manner of imagining the real.” Law is “meaning … not machinery.” It is “a species of social imagination.” It “is constructive of social realities rather than merely reflective of them.”

This article looks at one component of Taiwan's development experience, the informal financing techniques used by small businesses, to clarify the interaction between the formal Republic of China (ROC) legal system and the network structure of Taiwanese society. The ROC legal system has supported the economic development process direcdy by regulating economic activity, and indirectly by facilitating the networks of relationships that also regulate economic activity. The relational structure of traditional, rural Chinese society has survived in a modified form in modern Taiwan, and this modern form selectively blends elements of the modern legal system, networks of relationships, and the enforcement services of organized crime. Ideas such as “legal centralism” and “legal pluralism” fail to capture the dynamic of the relationship between the ROC legal system and Taiwanese society, so the idea of “marginalization of law” is offered as a better description.

In this study, we assess the impact of attitudinal and jurisprudential factors on the Supreme Court's resolution of intercircuit conflicts. In doing so, we depart from earlier efforts to assess the impact of legal factors that conceptualize law as an external constraint. Instead, we view jurisprudential considerations in terms of the justices' efforts to adopt the most legally persuasive position in light of accepted methods of legal reasoning. Our analyses reveal that the justices are (1) more likely to follow the reasoning process adopted by the majority of circuits involved in the conflict, (2) less likely to adopt the conflict position marred by contrary dissents and concurrences in the circuit court opinions, and (3) more likely to adopt the conflict position endorsed by prestigious circuit court judges. Our findings suggest that jurisprudential considerations, as well as attitudinal concerns, affect the justices' decisionmaking processes in a substantial minority of cases.

I employ a theoretical framework developed on the basis of the writings of Max Weber to analyze historical developments in the formation of international police organizations. I rely on a comparative analysis of selected cases of international police networks and centrally focus on the most famous and enduring of such structures, the International Criminal Police Commission, the forerunner of the organization since 1956 known as “Interpol.” Using a Weberian perspective of bureaucratization, I maintain that the formation of international police organizations was historically made possible when public police institutions were sufficiently detached from the political centers of their respective states to function autonomously as expert bureaucracies. Under such circumstances of institutional autonomy, police bureaucracies fostered practices of collaboration across the borders of their respective national jurisdictions because and when they were motivated by a professionally defined interest in the fight against international crime. In conclusion to this analysis, I argue for the value of sociological perspectives of social control that are not reductionist, but that instead bring out the specific socially and sociologically significant dimensions of control mechanisms.

In the U.S. legal system, litigants frequently retain counsel to represent their interests in civil cases, particularly when the stakes are high. Scholarly work and anecdotal evidence suggest that variation in the quality of advocacy has the potential to affect litigant success. We examine the relationship between attorney characteristics, case outcomes, and judicial voting in products liability decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Our analysis found some differences in the levels of experience and specialization of counsel representing defendants and plaintiffs and that counsel expertise was, at times, related to litigant success. In a multivariate model of decisionmaking, judges were less likely to support the position of plaintiffs when they were represented by counsel appearing for the first time before the circuit. When defendants were represented by attorneys who did not specialize in relevant areas of the law, judges were more likely to decide in favor of the plaintiff. These findings suggest that those attorneys who do not meet a minimum threshold of expertise will be less likely to find judicial support for their client than other attorneys. Such attorneys may be less successful as a result of their lack of familiarity with the law and appellate process or because they make poor choices regarding the likelihood of success on appeal.

This article examines the consequences of prison overcrowding litigation for U.S. prisons. We use insights derived from the endogeneity of law perspective to develop expectations about the likely impact of overcrowding litigation on five outcomes: prison admissions, prison releases, spending on prison capacity, prison crowding, and incarceration rates. Using newly available data on prison overcrowding litigation cases joined with panel data on U.S. states from 1971 to 1996, we offer a novel and comprehensive analysis of the impact that overcrowding litigation has had on U.S. prisons. We find that it had no impact on admissions or release rates and did not lead to any reduction in prison crowding. Litigation did, however, lead to an increase in spending on prison capacity and incarceration rates. We discuss the implications of these results for endogeneity of law theory, attempts to achieve reform through litigation, and the politics of prison construction.

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.

In recent years there has been substantial concern over the issue of whether the judiciary is a representative institution. Most research on the matter suggests that judges are to some degree sensitive to public opinion, but confusion exists over the process through which the public affects the courts. This research is designed to reduce the level of confusion.

Taking advantage of the quasi-experimental research design afforded by the “circuit” system of court organization used by the Iowa trial courts, this research investigates the “sharing” model of representation. In order to insure against spurious results, controls are introduced for three types of influences on sentencing decisions: defendant and case attributes, judge attributes and role orientations, and local system practices. Analysis of a path model consisting of measures of sentencing behavior, seriousness of crime in the local jurisdiction, and perceptions of crime seriousness reveals that one-sixth of the variance in sentences can be explained. However, substantial variation across judges in responsiveness to local norms is also discovered.

Further investigation of these data was undertaken to determine the factors that account for variation in the strength of environmental linkages. The analysis suggests that judges with greater contact with their constituencies, who have experienced electoral defeat, and who assume a “delegate” role orientation, are far more influenced by environmental factors.

The article concludes with some observations on how the process of recruitment and early career patterns affect representation.

This paper estimates the voter registration, turnout, and party registration in the 2008 general election for men with felony convictions in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, and North Carolina. The findings indicate that turnout among felons is much lower than previous research has shown. Ex-felon turnout in 2008 varied by state, averaging 22.2 percent. People captured and convicted for their first offense after the election voted at similarly low rates. Also contrary to the expectations of previous literature, the ex-felon population does not seem overwhelmingly Democratic. In North Carolina and Florida, two states for which the data are available, party registration varies by race. Among registered black male ex-felons, 71.7 percent in North Carolina and 84.2 percent in Florida are registered Democrats. Among whites, however, only 35.3 percent and 36.4 percent of ex-felons are registered Democrats in North Carolina and Florida, respectively.

This article explores the reemergence of the Law and Development Movement in the post–Cold War era, with special reference to the impact of foreign legal assistance programs on legal and political reforms in Vietnam. Relying on extensive interviews conducted in Vietnam, as well as traditional academic research, the article focuses on changes in Vietnam's legal culture in the first decade of political “renovation.” It then describes foreign legal assistance to Vietnam. Finally, it applies the critiques that emerged from the law and development debate to present-day legal assistance efforts in Vietnam, in an effort to determine the validity of those critiques in the post–Cold War era of foreign legal assistance.

Evidence that juries treat corporate defendants less favorably than individual defendants is often cited in support of the widely held view that juries are biased against wealthy “deep-pocket” defendants. Such evidence confounds defendant wealth and defendant identity. In two juror simulation experiments involving citizens on jury duty, these factors were separated by manipulating whether the defendant was described as a poor individual, a wealthy individual, or a corporation; the defendant's assets were described identically in the latter two conditions. In Experiment 1, liability was significantly more likely, and awards were significantly greater, for corporate defendants than for wealthy individual defendants, but verdicts against poor versus wealthy individuals did not differ. In Experiment 2, awards were larger against wealthy individuals who engaged in commercial rather than personal activities, and awards in the personal activity condition were larger against corporations than wealthy individuals. There was little evidence for a defendant wealth effect on juror judgments. While juries do appear to treat corporations differently, the explanation may have more to do with citizens' views about the special risks and responsibilities of commercial activity.

This report describes a study of the effects of a Scandinavian-style law concerning alcohol-impaired driving. The past two decades have seen the adoption throughout most of the developed world of drinking-and-driving laws based on principles originally developed in Norway and Sweden. The French law of July 12, 1978, was a part of this general development. Interrupted time-series analysis of French data on crash-related injuries and fatalities shows that the 1978 law had a notable deterrent effect, but that the effect was not permanent.

Police reformers in the early 21st century place great importance on the development of police-community partnerships, but they have not recognized the deep obstacles that these relationships face. This study argues that the central problems of working in partnership involve conflict over values: Different organizations advance different social values, and when the partners who cling to them try to collaborate, conflict flares up at the point of contact. I draw on several case studies to describe how these conflicts surface and potentially undermine partnerships, and I analyze the strategies that police agencies have developed to respond to them. This analysis reveals that community policing has fundamental (and probably desirable) implications for police practice because it forces police to attend to many neglected dimensions of their mandate. The article thereby offers a new interpretation of community policing's implications for practice and a new interpretation of its value as a reform movement.

Field data from a longitudinal study of drug dealing reveal the importance of interpersonal networks in determining the impact of criminal sanctions. The level of perceived sanction severity was in large measure dependent on the degree of disruption created in interpersonal relations and on the resilience of these relations in adapting to the sanctioning process. Perceived certainty of sanctions was likewise dependent on characteristics of interpersonal interactions. Perceived certainty and severity of sanctions combined to define the level of fear. Sanction-induced fear increased network density and closure. These network properties were largely responsible for the paradoxical impact of sanctions. The relevance of these findings for deterrence research is noted throughout.

This article addresses the question of how states can best promote citizens' compliance with laws that regulate livelihoods. Based on ethnographic data from fishing communities in three countries—Norway, Canada, and South Africa—the article compares compliance motivations that exist under different socioeconomic and political conditions. The comparisons give rise to a typology of three compliance motivations: deterrence, moral support for the law's content, and the legislator's authority. This article then identifies three governable preconditions—enforcement, empowerment of citizens, and civic identity—that respectively explain these motivations. The article argues that the compliance discourse in a given type of state must be framed such that it includes at least the governable preconditions for compliance that have not been met in that state. Consequently, a functional compliance strategy would vary between different state types. The article thus questions the transferability of the developed world's compliance discourses to the developing world.

Many studies suggest that courts fail to protect individual rights since they support and uphold state repressive practices during periods of emergency or confrontation. Previous studies focused on judicial policies as reflected injudicial declarations and decisions that were fully disposed by judges and officially published. I argue that the study of out-of-court settlements and the comparison between the outcomes of settlements and the judicial rhetoric are key to understanding the behavior of courts in times of national crisis. At such times, courts may hesitate to openly confront the government on the issue of minority rights, but they may strive to protect minorities by exerting pressure on the governmental legal apparatus and by effecting out-of-court settlements more favorable to minorities than official decisions. Thus, courts influence social practices while avoiding government or public opinion counterreactions that would impair their institutional autonomy. This argument is demonstrated in a case study of the Israeli High Court of Justice during the Palestinian Intifada.

The article connects two strands of the recent sociolegal debate: (1) the empirical discovery of new forms of spontaneous law in the course of globalization, and (2) the emergence of deconstructive theories of law that undermine the law's hierarchy. The article puts forward the thesis that law's hierarchy has successfully resisted all old and new attempts at its deconstruction; it breaks, however, under the pressures of globalization that produced a global law without the state, as self-created law of global society that has no institutionalized support whatsoever in international politics and public international law. Consequendy, the article criticizes deconstructive theories for their lack of autological analysis. These theories do not take into account the historical conditions of deconstruction. Accordingly, deconstructive analysis of law would have to look for new legal distinctions that are plausible under the new conditions of a doubly fragmented global society. The article sketches the contours of an emerging polycontextural law.