Law Commons^™

Dignity Transacted: Emotional Labor And The Racialized Workplace, Lu-In Wang, Zachary W. Brewster

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In interactive customer service encounters, the dignity of the parties becomes the currency of a commercial transaction. Service firms that profit from customer satisfaction place great emphasis on emotional labor, the work that service providers do to make customers feel cared for and esteemed. But performing emotional labor can deny dignity to workers by highlighting their subservience and requiring them to suppress their own emotions in an effort to elevate the status and experiences of their customers. Paradoxically, the burden of performing emotional labor may also impose transactional costs on some customers by facilitating discrimination in service delivery. Drawing on …

The City And The Soul: Character And Thriving In Law And Politics, Sherman J. Clark

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article describes a way of thinking about law and politics that is ancient in origins but largely absent from modern legal scholarship. It poses a two-part question: how do our law and politics influence our character, and how does that in turn influence how well and fully we live?

Much legal scholarship asks how law can be more efficient and effective in making us richer, healthier, safer, and such. This is good: wealth, health, and safety are—or can be—good things. But material conditions are not the only things that make for a rich and full life. What also matters—and …

Dispossessing Detroit: How The Law Takes Property, Mary Kathlin Sickel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Introduction for the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform's Symposium “Dispossessing Detroit: How the Law Takes Property,” hosted on November 9 and 10, 2019.