bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Judicial Activism in Post-Communist Politics
Authors: Ishiyama Smithey Shannon , Ishiyama John
Published: June 2006

This article documents and provides possible explanations for the degree of judicial activism in eight post-communist countries. We examined constitutional court cases for the three years following the initial adoption of a constitution in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, and Slovakia. We found that contextual political factors, such as the extent to which the party system is fragmented and the extent to which the court enjoys popular trust and confidence (rather than the formal powers entrusted to the court by the constitution or the structure of the political system), contribute most to the degree of activism by constitutional courts.
Sampling Problems in Industry
Authors: Pearson E. S.
Published: June 2006

Basis of a Discussion opened by the author before the Industrial and Agricultural Research Section of the Royal Statistical Society, March 8th, 1934, Dr. W. H. COATES in the Chair.
Sequential Tests in Industrial Statistics
Authors: Barnard G. A.
Published: June 2006

After an introductory and an historical note, an elementary problem of simple qualitative inspection of a box of components is treated by using a “lattice diagram representation.” This leads to the consideration of sequential tests for such cases. Procedures for determining “Target-Handicap” forms of inspection, and their operating and sample size properties are given.

This leads to a consideration of general linear sequential tests, which are those test procedures which can be formulated in terms of a “score.” Such procedures are shown to be similar to classical games of chance, and to physical diffusion processes. The diffusion analogy leads to a differential equation which gives the approximate characteristics of any such linear test.

In many cases, Wald’s “Probability Ratio Sequential Test” takes the form of a linear test. The conditions for this are determined. The P.R.S. test is seen to be “best possible linear test,” in the sense of minimizing average sample size. The effects of deviations from normality, and general distributions are considered.

Reference is made to Wald’s work on tests which involve parameters other than those being estimated, and then consideration is restricted to tests for the mean of normal populations where the variance is unknown. Methods of reducing such tests to simple binomial tests are indicated.

A number of procedures for use with 2 × 2 comparative trials, and double dichotomies, are given, and their properties discussed.

Returning to general inspection problems, the paper indicates that these are not always to be identified with problems involving merely tests of statistical hypotheses. The notions of Consumer’s Lot, Producer’s Batch, the Lot Quality Curve, the Process Curve, are explained, and their importance indicated. A distinction is made between Acceptance Inspection schemes and Rectifying Inspection schemes, and the notions of Operating Characteristic Curve, Operating Characteristic Matrix, and the Sample Size distribution function are explained.

The lattice diagram is used to bring out relationships between notions involved in general inspection, and some other uses are also indicated.

Finally, some reflections on the relevance of the matters discussed to matters of current debate among statisticians are given.
Victimization, Types of Citizen-Police Contacts, and Attitudes Toward the Police
Authors: Smith Paul E. , Hawkins Richard O.
Published: June 2006

One of the ironies of police-community relations is that the high visibility via the mass media of public reaction against police has created the impression that public attitudes are predominantly negative. Evidence from field surveys suggests the opposite—that attitudes are predominantly positive and supportive of police (Gourley, 1954; Cleaver, et al., 1966; Preiss and Ehrlich, 1966; Ennis, 1967; McCaghy, et al., 1968; Bayley and Mendelsohn, 1969; Smith, 1969). In a similar vein, police often view citizens as holding more hostile attitudes toward the police than is in fact the case (McNamara, 1967: 221; Wilson, 1968: 28; Bayley and Mendelsohn, 1969). This shared misunderstanding can have self-fulfilling consequences. Police expect a hostile citizen reception and hence take a more authoritarian attitude in order to assure that actions will be seen as legitimate and authority will not be questioned (Westley, 1953; Skolnick, 1966: 62; Werthman and Piliavin, 1967). The public, expecting the worst from the police, may alter their perceptions so that criticisms of police behavior are more likely. This shared misunderstanding produces more conflict between citizen and police. Instances of police brutality are covered by the media, and the cycle continues.
Power, Influence, and Behavioral Compliance
Authors: Tedeschi James T. , Bonoma Thomas V. , Schlenker Barry R. , Lindskold Svenn
Published: June 2006

Social psychologists have traditionally been concerned with problems of social conflict, power, influence, and persuasion. Yet, when one looks for systematic theory and evidence regarding the determinants of behavioral compliance to rules, norms, or influence attempts, few prescriptions can be garnered by the practical man of affairs for developing policy in matters of law and order. In a day when shouts of black power, student protests, and antiwar demonstrations reverberate through the legitimate institutions of the country and when violence commissions report the degree of disorder existing in the urban centers of America, lack of social scientific evidence upon which to base policy is a disquieting comment upon the relevance of social scientific research.
A Perspective on Police Professionalization
Authors: White Susan O.
Published: June 2006

In the reform literature on the police, ranging from Hopkins' Our Lawless Police and the Wickersham Commission Reports in the 1930s to the Presidential Commissions of the 1960s, the argument has always been made that effective police reform waits upon professionalization. It is implied that better personnel, with better training, will provide better performance of police tasks. The recruitment and training proposals that are offered suggest that criteria such as a college degree are necessary in order to encourage adherence to “high professional standards of law enforcement.” Few have challenged the implicit assumption that professionalization is indeed efficacious, despite the fact that clear evidence of better performance has never been offered.
Citizen Interviews, Organizational Feedback, and Police-Community Relations Decisions
Authors: Bordua David J. , Tifft Larry L.
Published: June 2006

Police-community relations programs are intended to be long-range, full-scale efforts to acquaint the police and the community with each other's problems and to stimulate action aimed at solving problems; they have been criticized, however, as being concerned mainly with raising the professional image of the police in the minds of the public (President's Commission, 1967a: 100). In some ways, they seem to have functioned to slow down change and to maintain present police policies and practices.

The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967b: 178) has indicated that some of these policies and practices cannot be justified. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968: 158) comments that some activities of even the most “professional” police departments may heighten tension and enhance the potential for civil disorder.
Calling the Police: The Evaluation of Police Service
Authors: Furstenberg Frank F. , Wellford Charles F.
Published: June 2006

In the rapidly expanding literature on the police, one question has been treated with increasing frequency in the past few years: How can the police be encouraged to become more responsive to the publics they serve? Many writers contend that in order for change to take place, it will be necessary to alter those conditions which affect the type of individual who becomes a policeman, either by modifying recruitment procedures, the training process, or the schedule of compensation (President's Commission, 1967a: 20). Others have questioned whether such strategies will work unless they are accompanied by basic social and organizational changes, redefining the role of the police officer and his relationship to the community (President's Commission, 1967a: 149).
Enforcement of Water Pollution Control Law
Authors: Wenner Lettie M.
Published: June 2006

Pollution control today is a favorite topic for campaign promises by American politicians. If the present public interest in the environment and problems of overpopulation continues, it may one day replace motherhood as the single safest subject for political rhetoric. Everyone, including polluters, is against pollution. But once that philosophical belief has been passionately embraced, the problem of achieving this highly desirable public policy goal remains. On that subject many politicians and all polluters are much less articulate. So many different opinions exist as to the best method for achieving air pollution control, water pollution abatement, and sanitary, efficient solid waste disposal, that one begins to understand why it is that little progress has been made despite the seemingly universal belief in a clean environment.
A Note on Political Coerciveness and Turmoil
Authors: Paranzino Dennis
Published: June 2006

Feierabend, Nesvold, and Feierabend (1970) suggest two major hypotheses relating the concept of permissiveness-coerciveness of political regimes to the occurrence of political instability. First, they expect that “Low levels of political coerciveness (that is, political permissiveness) and high levels of coerciveness are associated with internal stability while mid-levels of coerciveness are associated with political violence.” Second, they hypothesize that “The greater (lesser) the fluctuation in level of political coerciveness, the higher (lower) the level of political violence.” The justification of these hypotheses are largely in terms of the psychology of frustrations and aggression. Political coerciveness is conceptualized as a set of restraints on the behavior of individuals imposed by a political regime. The more restraints imposed by the regime the more likely is any particular individual to be inhibited from performing certain of his desired behaviors. This situation is seen as producing, in the aggregate, higher levels of system-wide frustrations. It is appreciated, however, that if the number of restraints imposed is sufficiently large, then along with higher levels of frustration there will also appear a deterrent effect. The deterrent effect will presumably prevent these frustrations from becoming manifest in politically violent behavior.
Indian Supreme Court Judges
Authors: Gadbois George H.
Published: June 2006

Thirty-six men served on the Supreme Court of India from its inception in 1950 through 1967. Examination of their background attributes reveals that the prototypic judge was the product of a socially prestige-ful and economically advantaged family, was a Hindu (most often a Brahmin), was educated at one of the better Indian universities or in England, spent twenty years in private law practice before the High Court in his home state, refrained from participation in the nationalist movement before 1947 and in postindependence politics thereafter, was appointed to the High Court before which he practiced when he was forty-seven, spent ten years as a High Court judge by which time he was the Chief Justice or seniormost puisne judge of that Court, and then was promoted to the Supreme Court when he was fifty-seven years of age. There are, of course, exceptions to this prototype, but striking is the homogeneous character and similar socialization experiences shared by these men.
Some Determinants of the Method of Case Disposition: Decision-Making by Public Defenders in Los Angeles
Authors: Mather Lynn M.
Published: June 2006

Only a small fraction of the criminal cases in the United States are decided by adversary trial processes. The vast majority are settled by guilty pleas; many of these pleas occur after some form of plea bargaining — either explicit negotiations over the entry of a guilty plea in exchange for a reduced charge or a lenient sentence, or tacit bargaining, as when the defendant pleads guilty in anticipation of lenient sentencing. The most frequently cited reason for plea bargaining is administrative expediency or “its utility in disposing of large numbers of cases in a quick and simple way” (Enker, 1967: 112). While caseload pressures are doubtlessly important, they may be overemphasized in the current literature.' Frequently both the prosecutor and the defendant want to avoid a full jury trial because of the risk and uncertainty involved. The prosecutor is under administrative and/or political pressure not to lose his case; a negotiated plea of guilty, even if on a reduced charge, is a sure conviction, while conviction by trial is never certain. The defendant's risk at trial is that his sentence on conviction may be much stiffer than if he had pleaded guilty.
A Comparative Theory of Dispute Institutions in Society
Authors: Abel Richard L.
Published: June 2006

Why study the legal systems of other times or places? Are there reasons beyond an antiquarianism or exoticism that seeks stimulation for a palate jaded by preoccupation with the minutiae of American law? The increased understanding to be gained by such intellectual exploration seems to me similar in origin to the pleasure any of us takes in travel. Differences of physical environment, modes of social intercourse, or patterns of culture awaken us to phenomena which at home are so familiar as to be almost invisible. When we resume our mundane round, the residue of such impressions compels us to recognize the contingency of our own ways, and leads us to look for explanations.
The Supreme Court and Myth: An Empirical Investigation
Authors: Casey Gregory
Published: June 2006

The mass public is often depicted as indifferent to and unaware of many facets of political life which elites deem essential to understanding the political process (Converse, 1964: 209-14, 231-41; Key, 1964: 182-85, 199-202). Yet despite its indifference to political reality as defined by elites, the general public does hold its own version of political reality - albeit a more emotional, more symbolic, and less concrete reality than elites view (Prothro and Grigg, 1960: 276-94; Edelman, 1967: 1-7, 12-19, 178-81; Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 31-34). Popular perceptions of the United States Supreme Court follow this pattern: on the one hand, most observers take for granted that the public appreciates the Court on a symbolic or mythical plane while, on the other hand, most research concludes that the masses lack factual information on this institution.
Complexity and Contradiction in the Legal Order: Balbus and the Challenge of Critical Social Thought About Law
Authors: Trubek David M.
Published: June 2006

We reach, then, not a simple conclusion (law = class power) but a complex and contradictory one. On the one hand, it is true that the law did mediate class relations to the advantage of the rulers; not only is this so, but … the law became a superb instrument by which these rulers were able to impose new definitions of property to their even greater advantage. … On the other hand, the law mediated these class relations through legal forms, which imposed, again and again, inhibitions upon the actions of the rulers. [Thompson, 1975:264]

As always in social life, the heart of the mystery lies in the relationship between the struggle for power and the beliefs people hold about what is good for them and what they are capable of achieving. That relationship is the cave into which we must follow the enigma. [Unger, 1976b:242]
Consumer Response to Unsatisfactory Purchases: A Survey of Perceiving Defects, Voicing Complaints, and Obtaining Redress
Authors: Best Arthur , Andreasen Alan R.
Published: June 2006

A survey of consumer reactions to common purchases was conducted in 1975. Consumers perceive problems with many products and services, and voice complaints concerning about one-third of those problems. Third-party complaint processors play a very small role in buyer-seller disputes. Household status and type of problem influence perception of problems and choice of action or inaction. Satisfactory resolutions occur in somewhat more than half of voiced complaint cases. To increase voicing and fair handling of complaints, procedural changes at the buyer-seller level are suggested; to improve treatment of complaints that are not resolved at the buyer-seller level, improvements in community small claims courts are suggested.
The Legislation of Crime and Delinquency: A Review of Theory, Method, and Research
Authors: Hagan John
Published: June 2006

Nearly all of us will agree that “one case does not make a sample.” Nonetheless, there is a tendency to disregard this advice when it comes to studying the historical origins of laws concerning crime and delinquency. This is understandable since it is generally acknowledged that the micro- and macro-level processes surrounding the origins of many such laws are so complex that they can only be examined case by case (e.g., Hall, 1952; Chambliss, 1964). But such an approach creates problems: although any single case study is clearly inadequate to support generalizations, strong theoretical inferences frequently are drawn, often violating the constraints adopted with more conventional data. This essay reviews a number of North American case studies in an attempt to clarify the theoretical and methodological limitations, prospects, and findings of the literature on criminal lawmaking.

I introduce this review by contrasting the two principal theoretical perspectives that guide such studies. I then discuss problems of evidence related to these rival theories, using an analysis of the origins of theft laws as my example. Following this, I review a large number of empirical studies concerned with the origin of laws that I have grouped into three categories: (i) delinquency and probation; (ii) alcohol and drug abuse; and (iii) prostitution and sexual psychopathy. Finally, I examine the implications of these and other legislative studies for future work in this important area of research.
Adjudication and Sentencing in A Misdemeanor Court: The Outcome is the Punishment
Authors: Ryan John Paul
Published: June 2006

A description and analysis of the Columbus (Ohio) Municipal Court is presented in the context of comparison with Malcolm Feeley's recent study of the New Haven lower court. The findings suggest that the Columbus court is much more severe in the sanctions imposed upon convicted defendants. These differences are attributed, in part, to contrasting local political cultures whose influence upon courts is mediated by police department orientations, police-prosecutor relationships, and methods of judicial assignment.
Plea Bargaining and its History
Authors: Alschuler Albert W.
Published: June 2006

For most of the history of the common law, Anglo-American courts did not encourage guilty pleas but actively discouraged them. Plea bargaining emerged as a significant practice only after the American Civil War, and it generally met with strong disapproval on the part of appellate courts. This practice nevertheless became a dominant method of resolving criminal cases at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, and it attracted significant attention and criticism as a result of crime commission studies in the 1920s. In recent years, American criminal courts have become even more dependent on the guilty plea, but the good press that plea bargaining currently enjoys in legal and social science circles is a very recent development. This article explores changes in guilty plea practices and in attitudes toward the guilty plea from the Middle Ages to the present.
Pretrial Settlement Conference: Evaluation of a Reform in Plea Bargaining
Authors: Heinz Anne M. , Kerstetter Wayne A.
Published: June 2006

A field experiment in Dade County, Florida, evaluated the use of a pretrial settlement conference as a means of restructuring plea negotiations. All negotiations took place in front of a judge and victim, defendant, and arresting police officer were invited to attend. The conferences were brief but generally reached at least an outline of a settlement. They usually included at least one lay party although lay attendance rates were quite low. The change in the structure reduced the time involved in processing cases by lowering the information and decisionmaking costs to the judges and attorneys. No significant changes were observed in the settlement rate or in the imposition of criminal sanctions. There was some evidence that police and victims who attended the sessions obtained more information and developed more positive attitudes about the way their cases were handled.
Alaska's Ban on Plea Bargaining
Authors: Rubinstein Michael L. , White Teresa J.
Published: June 2006

Plea bargaining was banned by Alaska's Attorney General in August of 1975. The ban extended to all crimes, and forbade both charge and sentence negotiations. Its effects, evaluated by the Alaska Judicial Council in a two-year study, were to increase some sentences, increase trials modestly, and—surprisingly—increase the productivity of the criminal justice system. Explicit plea bargaining appears to have been substantially reduced, without any noticeable commensurate increase in implicit bargaining. The Alaska experience strongly suggests the need to reexamine contemporary thinking about plea bargaining.
Do The “Haves” Come Out Ahead? Winning and Losing in State Supreme Courts, 1870–1970
Authors: Wheeler Stanton , Cartwright Bliss , Kagan Robert A. , Friedman Lawrence M.
Published: June 2006

This paper tests the hypothesis that financially and organizationally stronger parties tend to prevail in litigation against weaker parties, either because the normative structure of the American legal system has favored “the haves,” or because judges' attitudes do, or because stronger parties have strategic and representational advantages in litigation. The study is based on a sample of 5,904 cases from sixteen state supreme courts, 1870–1970. According to our data, stronger parties, especially larger governmental units, did tend to achieve an advantage over weaker parties, but the advantage generally was rather small. The stronger parties' edge recurs in subsamples for different types of cases, time periods, and types of legal representation. It is attributed in part to the greater litigational capabilities of stronger parties.
Cops on Call: Summoning the Police to the Scene of Spousal Violence
Authors: Berk Richard A. , Berk Sarah Fenstermaker , Newton Phyllis J. , Loseke Donileen R.
Published: June 2006

In this paper, we examine factors that affect whether the police are summoned to incidents of spousal violence. The actions of bystanders are distinguished from the actions of victims, and we find that victims and bystanders are moved by somewhat different influences. We also find that the immediate features of the situation dominate the decision to call the police and that many legitimate concerns are salient (e.g., whether there are injuries). In addition, however, some extralegal influences are important so that different offenders engaged in the same crime do not necessarily face the same risks of apprehension. For example, other things equal, bystanders are less likely to call the police if the offender and victim are living together.
Juvenile Justice Italian Style
Authors: Lemert Edwin M.
Published: June 2006

The juvenile court in Italy was established many years after those in the United States and other European countries. Even after its creation problems of differentiation and staffing remained, and delays plus ineffective services continue to complicate day-to-day operations of the juvenile courts. I propose that the juvenile court in Italy has been a spurious development, reflecting contradictions between the culture of legal certainty and familism, and the adoption of a pattern of discretionary justice based on the positivism of Ferri. Operations of the juvenile court resemble rituals aimed to satisfy conflicting values. Signs are that its legitimacy has been weakened and that other forms of social control have emerged or reemerged.
Does It Pay to Plead Guilty? Differential Sentencing and the Functioning of Criminal Courts
Authors: Brereton David , Casper Jonathan D.
Published: June 2006

Do defendants who plead guilty receive lighter sentences than those with similar charges and attributes who exercise their right to trial? The assertion that they do has long been at the heart of the literature describing and explaining the plea-bargaining process, though it has been questioned in some important work published recently. The existence of sentence differentials is particularly hard to document statistically, because a successfully operating policy of punishing those who go to trial will in fact minimize the number of cases in which the sanction for trial has to be imposed. Examination of data from three California counties, as well as consideration of various theoretical concerns, leads us to argue that sentence differentials are likely to characterize jurisdictions whose disposition patterns are based on inducing most defendants to plead guilty.
“Handling” Family Violence: Situational Determinants of Police Arrest in Domestic Disturbances
Authors: Berk Sarah Fenstermaker , Loseke Donileen R.
Published: June 2006

The recent “discovery” of family violence, particularly violence between spouses, has elicited attention from social scientists and policy makers. Police intervention in domestic disputes is a primary focus. Critiques of police practice have often centered on police failure to arrest offenders in domestic violence incidents. Yet, the literature to date reveals little effort to examine systematically the discretionary role of police in domestic disputes. With data drawn from 262 official police reports concerning domestic disturbances, the propensity of police to make arrests is examined through a variety of exogenous variables. Police arrests, we find, reflect the immediate circumstances of police-citizen encounters.
Comment on Merry
Authors: Von Benda-Beckmann Franz
Published: June 2006

Merry's comprehensive review shows us how studies of plural normative orderings during the past twenty-five years have greatly enriched our understanding of the complexity of normative structures, their interdependence and the ways in which these structures are involved in human agency. At the same time her review illustrates how little conceptual progress has been made. We do not have a more acute understanding nor a refined conceptual usage of the terms law, normative order, or pluralism. In a way this is reassuring. It tells us that stimulating new research and methodological approaches can be developed without giving much thought to these conceptual problems. The best historical writings in legal pluralism in colonial societies, such as the Dutch studies on Indonesian societies, did not excessively ponder whether the local normative systems should or should not be called law. The neo-classicists of legal pluralism such as Macaulay (1963) and Moore (1973) explicitly did not present their data as legal pluralism, and when Galanter (1981) tells us about indigenous law in western societies he does not make much fuss about it.
Formal Processing and Future Delinquency: Deviance Amplification as Selection Artifact
Authors: Smith Douglas A. , Paternoster Raymond
Published: June 2006

Does referring a case to juvenile court or diverting it affect a person's future delinquent/criminal behavior? Labeling theory suggests that it does, arguing that formal processing by the juvenile justice system is part of a deviance amplification process that ultimately results in increased criminal/delinquent activity. But critics point out that a higher rate of future offending among those referred to court, often interpreted as evidence supporting the deviance amplification argument, could be nothing more than a selection artifact. Specifically, those referred to juvenile court may have more attributes that are related to future offending than do those who are diverted from the system. Under this scenario, differences between these groups in later offending could simply reflect preexisting differences in criminal propensity. This article discusses approaches for testing the deviance amplification argument against the alternative hypothesis of a selection artifact.
The Sentencing Decisions of Black and White Judges: Expected and Unexpected Similarities
Authors: Spohn Cassia
Published: June 2006

Those who champion the representation of blacks on the bench argue that black judges may make a difference. Indeed, some suggest that increasing the proportion of black judges might result in more equitable treatment of black and white defendants. In this study we test these expectations. Using data on defendants charged with violent felonies, we compare the sentencing decisions of black and white judges in Detroit. We find remarkable similarities and conclude that judicial race has relatively little predictive power. More important, we find that both black and white judge sentence black offenders more severely than white offenders. Our results raise questions about the appropriate interpretation of racial disparity in incarceration rates and suggest that the harsher treatment of black offenders cannot be attributed to the racism of white judges.
The Elusive Shadow of the Law
Authors: Jacob Herbert
Published: June 2006

This article explores the conditions which lead to variation in the degree to which law affects private negotiations? It is an extension and modification of Mnookin and Kornhauser's (1979) formulation that negotiations occur in the shadow of the law. Drawing on prior research on disputes, I hypothesize that this effect depends on the way a claim is framed (which in turn is affected by the claimant's gender), on the mode of attorney involvement, and on claimant use of informational networks. I examine these hypotheses by an analysis of a small sample of recently divorced men and women who were interviewed about the negotiations that led to their custody and child-support arrangements.
Speaking of Death: Narratives of Violence in Capital Trials
Authors: Sarat Austin
Published: June 2006

How are violence and pain put into legal discourse? How does law distinguish its violence—capital punishment—from other kinds of violence? Do the strategies used to differentiate legal and extralegal violence alleviate anxiety about law and the uses to which law's violence is put? This article addresses these questions through an analysis of a capital trial in which an African-American man is being retried for the murder of a young white woman. It examines the social and cultural resources used to speak about violence and to differentiate legal and extralegal violence, and it suggests that the juxtaposition of narratives about violence in capital trials arouses rather than alleviates anxiety.
Chance and the Death Penalty
Authors: Berk Richard A. , Weiss Robert , Boger Jack
Published: June 2006

We address capriciousness in decisions by prosecutors to charge homicide defendants with a capital crime. We suggest that it is useful to think of such decisions as a kind of lottery in which one should focus on the distribution of outcomes when considering both the nature of capriciousness and the degree of capriciousness. After our conceptional framework is introduced, we illustrate our ideas with the analysis of a data set from San Francisco.
Legal Mobilization for Social Reform: Power and the Politics of Agenda Setting
Authors: Kessler Mark
Published: June 2006

This article develops an agenda setting framework for studying the role of American courts in protecting and promoting the interests of the politically disadvantaged. Drawing from work on agenda setting processes in local political systems, the author presents a framework that examines the ways in which varying configurations of organizational power influence the types of issues that reach lower court agendas. The framework and its implications are illustrated with findings from empirical research on legal mobilization on behalf of the poor by federally funded legal services lawyers. The article shows the variety of mechanisms employed by powerful local interests to constrain poverty lawyers who wish to mobilize issues of social reform. The findings suggest that judicial agendas may reflect prevailing distributions of power to a much greater extent than is implied by conventional views of the legal system's utility in effecting social reform.
The Social Distribution of Femicide in Urban Canada, 1921–1988
Authors: Gartner Rosemary , McCarthy Bill
Published: June 2006

How well do conventional perspectives on homicide account for the social distribution of femicide, or the killing of females? An analysis of 670 cases of femicide in Toronto and Vancouver from 1921 to 1988 provides stronger support for an alternative perspective that acknowledges both the intimate, domestic character of femicide and the historically contingent nature of opportunities and motivations for femicide. Rather than coming to resemble male homicide, femicide remains as concentrated in private, domestic locations and relationships as it was seventy years ago. However, the relationships between femicide and some social statuses, such as women's employment, have changed over time.
Law And Glasnost': Some Thoughts About the Future of Judicial Review Under Socialism
Authors: Markovits Inga
Published: June 2006

As part of the dramatic reforms now sweeping through Eastern Europe, a number of socialist states have enacted new legislation enabling courts to review the legality of administrative decisionmaking. In this essay, I will speculate about the likely development of a socialist rule of law. Using examples from capitalist and socialist law, I will argue that judicial review is at odds both with the long-range ideological goals of socialist societies and with the daily constraints operating on socialist officials and citizens. However, even if judicial review itself is unlikely to gain significant impact in socialist societies as we know them, other changes brought about by socialist law reforms will increasingly help to shelter a socialist citizen against the arbitrary use of state power.
Exploring the Effect of Resource Availability and the Likelihood of Female-Perpetrated Homicides
Authors: Browne Angela , Williams Kirk R.
Published: June 2006

The research presented here examines the effect of legal and extralegal resources on the likelihood of female-perpetrated homicides. It looks at the relationship between gender-specific rates of partner homicide in the United States for 1976–79 and 1980–84, and the availability of legal and extralegal resources for abused women, using states as the unit of analysis. Results indicate that the availability of such resources is associated with a decline in the rates of female-, but not male-, perpetrated homicides in 1980–84, compared to the 1976–79 time period. These findings suggest that legal and extralegal interventions can provide nonviolent alternatives for victims of male partner abuse.
The Impact of Research on Legal Policy: The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment
Authors: Sherman Lawrence W. , Cohn Ellen G.
Published: June 2006

Experimental research has recently shown a powerful impact on legal policy. An experiment demonstrating a deterrent effect of arrest on domestic violence has shaped public policy. Stimulated by efforts to publicize the results of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (Sherman and Berk, 1984a), police departments were persuaded to adopt an arrest policy for misdemeanor domestic violence. Over one-third of respondents from U.S. police departments in 117 cities said their policy had been influenced by the experiment, although respondents from some departments that adopted an arrest policy did not recognize the experiment or its results. Lempert (1987, 1984), citing medical research as precedent, suggests that this impact is premature and inappropriate until replications are completed. However, we find no indication that medical research employs a standard of delaying adoption of research results prior to replication. Our analysis suggests that publicity can encourage replication of legal research at other sites and thus improve the knowledge base for policy recommendations.
Sexual Violence, Victim Advocacy, and Republican Criminology
Authors: Scheingold Stuart A. , Olson Toska , Pershing Jana
Published: June 2006

We are grateful for the thoughtful responses to our study of the Washington State Community Protection Act (Braithwaite & Pettit 1994; Daly 1994). These responses underscore the importance of pushing beyond our case study and point to a variety of promising ways to determine the extent to which the problems we uncover in Washington are typical and/or idiosyncratic.
Evidence as Partisanship
Authors: Cooney Mark
Published: June 2006

This article analyzes the social origins of evidence. Applying Black's theory of partisan behavior to a variety of empirical materials indicates that the ability to attract supporting evidence is differentially distributed across social life. Thus, the amount of investigative effort legal officials put into a case, the willingness of people to testify, and the supportiveness of witness testimony all increase with the social status of the principal parties and the number of intimate ties they have. In addition, the quality, or credibility, of the evidence parties attract varies directly with their social status and the number of distant ties they have. Far from creating a factual component divorced from the social dimension of the case as is often believed, the evidentiary process helps to transform the attributes of high status and social ties into successful legal claims.
Indian Rights and Customary Law in Mexico: A Study of the Nahuas in the Sierra de Puebla
Authors: Sierra Maria Teresa
Published: June 2006

Based on the findings of a research project in a Nahua Indian area of central Mexico, this article focuses on the relationship between customary law and state law in the context of the administration of justice by and toward Indians. By showing how customary and state law interact and conflict in the everyday life of Indian people, it questions the idealized vision of customary law that appears to be taken for granted in the current debate over Indian rights in Mexico and Latin America. Thus a paradox is revealed between the intertwining of law and custom in social praxis and the revival of an ethnic discourse which calls for an autonomous indigenous legal system based on customary law.
Legally Mediated Identity: The National Environmental Policy Act and the Bureaucratic Construction of Interests
Authors: Espeland Wendy
Published: June 2006

In representing the interests of a group, law may simultaneously construct the subject holding those interests. When groups question the implications of an imposed subjectivity, the politics of identity may become a forum for resistance. I examine law's potential to shape identity, based on a controversial decision affecting Yavapai residents of the Fort McDowell Reservation in Arizona. A proposed dam threatened to move the Yavapai from their ancestral land. To develop the Environmental Impact Statement required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation adopted a rational decision framework that some Yavapai believed misrepresented them. Their resistance stimulated a reinterpretation of their collective identity, a defense of their distinctiveness, and a reassertion of their right to represent themselves. The effect of this reappraisal was a new appreciation and articulateness about Yavapai distinctiveness, an invigorated sense of their own history and, most important, their enhanced empowerment.
The Legal Cultures of Europe
Authors: Gibson James L. , Caldeira Gregory A.
Published: June 2006

Sociolegal scholars have become increasingly interested in comparative legal cultures, largely under the hypotheses that what people think about the law and the values embedded therein has something to do with how they behave and, ultimately, some consequences for the larger political and legal systems. For instance, attitudes toward the rule of law no doubt influence (though they do not determine) people's willingness to comply with laws. Most agree that one cannot understand the role of law in society without understanding something of legal cultures. We present an investigation into the legal cultures of the countries of the European Union. Drawing on mass surveys conducted within each of the countries (including a separate sample in East Germany), we explore popular attitudes toward various dimensions of law: support for the rule of law; perceptions that law is a nonneutral, repressive force; and support for individual liberty. Although our analysis focuses on national differences, we also explore within-system variation (e.g., across various socioeconomic strata). Ultimately, our purpose is to document cross-national differences in legal cultures and to take some tentative steps toward explaining the origins of these differences.
Negotiating Motherhood: Identity and Difference in “Open” Adoptions
Authors: Yngvesson Barbara
Published: June 2006

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.
Assessing the Capriciousness of Death Penalty Charging
Authors: Weiss Robert E. , Berk Richard A. , Lee Cathrine Y.
Published: June 2006

We discuss capriciousness in decisions to charge homicide defendants with capital crimes. We propose using Shannon Information to assess capriciousness in a charging system and apply Shannon Information to analyze new data from San Francisco County, California. We show that about two-thirds of the potential systemic capriciousness is removed by the explanatory variables available. The one-third remaining is dependent on inherently unstable features of charging practices that necessarily produce capriciousness.
The State and White-Collar Crime: Saving the Savings and Loans
Authors: Calavita Kitty , Pontell Henry N.
Published: June 2006

We attempt to make sense of the law enforcement response to the savings and loan debacle and the larger pattern of white-collar crime enforcement of which it is a part. Drawing from government documents and in-depth interviews with federal regulators and enforcement officials, we argue that the current response to savings and loan fraud is unprecedented both in terms of the extensive resources committed and the prosecution of thousands of white-collar offenders. Pointing out that this at first seems inconsistent with the government's relative tolerance of corporate crime cited in other white-collar crime studies, we borrow from state theory to explain this “crackdown.” By bringing together two traditions that have usually remained distinct—white-collar crime research and state theory—this analysis may contribute both to a better understanding of the government response to white-collar crime and to a more empirically grounded approach to the state.
Cultivating Clients in the Competition for Partnership: Gender and the Organizational Restructuring of Law Firms in the 1990s
Authors: Kay Fiona M. , Hagan John
Published: June 2006

In recent years, the legal profession has undergone significant organizational restructuring with the dramatic growth of firms and a rapid increase in the number of female lawyers. We argue that big firms actively recruited female lawyers during a period when women were needed to fill roles of cultivating and serving increasing numbers of institutional or corporate clients. Yet despite women's contribution of legal talent to the development of clientele, a glass ceiling has restricted their opportunities to advance in law firm hierarchies. We examine two approaches to gender inequities in law firm hierarchy: disparity as economic efficiency and disparity as structural discrimination. Both approaches neglect aspects of social relations within law firms as well as social resources lawyers bring to their work. We therefore introduce a social capital perspective to unpack how human capital is enhanced and how exclusionary practices are reinforced in law firms. Using a longitudinal study of male and female lawyers conducted from 1990 to 1996, we specify several different forms of social capital. The findings from our study reveal that female lawyers participate fully in the accumulation of social capital in law firms, through service to valued institutional clientele and high billings, yet their efforts result in reduced probabilities of partnership.
Attorney Expertise, Litigant Success, and Judicial Decisionmaking in the U.S. Courts of Appeals
Authors: Brodie Haire Susan , Hartley Roger , Lindquist Stefanie A.
Published: June 2006

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.