Law Commons^™

Shopping For Religion: The Change In Everyday Religious Practice And Its Importance To The Law, Rebecca Redwood French

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Lawyers And Biblical Prophets, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

This is part of a broader exploration of the suggestion that the biblical prophets-Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Nathan, and the others-are sources of ethical reflection and moral example for modern American lawyers. The suggestion appears to be unusual; I am not sure why.

The Prophets were, more than anything else, lawyers-as their successors, the Rabbis of the Talmud, were. They were neither teachers nor bureaucrats, not elected officials or priests or preachers. And the comparison is not an ancient curiosity:

Much of what admirable lawyer-heroes have done in modern America has been prophetic in the biblical sense-that is, what they …

Racial Purity Laws In The United States And Nazi Germany: The Targeting Process, Judy Scales-Trent

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No abstract provided.

Of Duncan, Peter And Thomas Kuhn, John Henry Schlegel

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No abstract provided.

Why Retire The Feminization Of Poverty Construct?, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

The "feminization of poverty" concept should be retired, if it has not already been so. It should be retired, even though the concept has been extremely powerful as a discursive construct. In a phrase, the idea captured a seemingly universal phenomenon, inspired theoretical research into the nexus between women and poverty, and summoned coalitions of women by marking an agenda for, and among, women across the boundaries of race, ethnicity, and nationality. In short, it has been a war cry, demanding and framing analyses of women's poverty, and justifying and inspiring women's collective action. Nevertheless, the feminization of poverty construct …

Re-Interpreting The Effect Of Rights: Career Narratives And The Americans With Disabilities Act, David M. Engel, Frank W. Munger

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No abstract provided.

Transgressing The Border Between Protection And Empowerment For Domestic Violence Victims And Older Children: Empowerment As Protection In The Foster Care System, Susan Vivian Mangold

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No abstract provided.

1998 Presidential Address—Making Connections: Law And Society Researchers And Their Subjects, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

This essay explores the theme of the 1998 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association: "Making Connections across Disciplines, Theories, and Methods," focusing in particular on the connections between researcher and subject and between researcher and researcher. The essay discusses three recent articles, by Joseph Sanders and V. Lee Hamilton, by Barbara Yngvesson, and by Margaret Montoya. These articles illustrate recent creative efforts by law and society researchers to forge new kinds of connections to their subjects. The articles also illustrate fundamentally different conceptions of the role of the researcher and of the methodologies on which sociolegal studies might …

Protection, Privatization And Profit In The Foster Care System, Susan Vivian Mangold

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No abstract provided.

Langdell's Auto-Da-Fé, John Henry Schlegel

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No abstract provided.

African Women In France: Immigration, Family And Work, Judy Scales-Trent

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No abstract provided.

Lamas, Oracles, Channels, And The Law: Reconsidering Religion And Social Theory, Rebecca Redwood French

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No abstract provided.

Cultural Criticism Of Law, Guyora Binder, Robert Weisberg

Journal Articles

Professors Binder and Weisberg expound a "cultural criticism" of law that views law as an arena for composing, representing, and contesting identity, and that treats identity as constitutive of the interests that motivate instrumental action. They explicate this critical method by reference to "New Historicist" literary criticism, postmodern social theory, and Nietzchean aesthetics. They illustrate this method by reviewing recent scholarship of two kinds: First, they explore how legal disputes take on expressive meaning for parties and observers against the background of legal norms regulating or recognizing identities. Second, they examine "readings" of the representations of character, credit, and value …

Dynastic Realms And Secular States: Introduction, David M. Engel

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No abstract provided.

The Church And The Law, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The image I want to use to talk about the church in the state, from a Christian lawyer's point of view, is in two of the novels of the late theological storyteller Walker Percy. We Percy readers first saw the image in Love in the Ruins. Percy's sub-title for that novel was "The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World." His setting is the not-too-distant future in North America. Social climate and civil discourse are even worse than they are now. Percy's central figure, Dr. Thomas More, the bad Catholic, and a few …

Post-Totalitarian Politics, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

This review essay examines two Hegelian responses to the unexpected collapse of communism, both published in 1992: The End of History by Francis Fukuyama and Civil Society and Political Theory by Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato. Fukuyama’s book famously predicted that the triumph of markets would lead to the end of armed conflict. Cohen & Arato celebrated the role of civil society activists in overthrowing communism, and proposed that first world progressives follow a similar path to reform. This review essay argues that Fukuyama’s interpretation of Hegel as a cold war liberal ignores Hegel’s warnings about the anomic and antisocial …

Origin Myths: Narratives Of Authority, Resistance, Disability, And Law, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

Origin stories are a distinctive form of narrative. In their account of how something "began to be," such stories connect past and present, clarify the meanings of important events, reaffirm core norms and values, and assert particular understandings of social order and individual identity. The parents of children with disabilities tell strikingly similar origin stories about the day their child was first diagnosed. Such stories not only explore the meanings of a transformative event but also draw implicit connections between past encounters with medical specialists and present encounters with educational specialists as mandated by an important federal statute. This article, …

Litigation Across Space And Time: Courts, Conflict, And Social Change, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

One of the problems facing researchers who have studied courts across time and space has been the cultural variability of seemingly uniform analytic categories, including conceptions of time and space themselves. This article proposes that we take such variations in meaning as a starting point for comparative studies of courts and social change rather than viewing them as were "noise" in the system. Litigation in Chiangmai, Thailand, is presented as an example. Changing conceptions of "space" in Thailand from the nineteenth century to the present illustrate the transformation of legal and political authority as well as the proliferation of normative …

A Judge Shapes And Manages Institutional Reform: School Desegregation In Buffalo, Judy Scales-Trent

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No abstract provided.

The Legal Community And The Transformation Of Disputes: The Settlement Of Injunction Actions, James B. Atleson

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Lawyers in cases involving injunctions against picketing represent clients in situations of great immediacy. A significant number of injunction actions are settled with reductions in picketing despite a seemingly restrictive statute and a highly organized workforce. This study of legal culture examines the role of lawyers in striving to create predictability, especially in regard to judges and the police, and in transforming conflicts of value into disputes over interests that can be resolved without resort to formal adjudication.

A Republican Agenda For Hobbesian America?, Elizabeth B. Mensch, Alan Freeman

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No abstract provided.

Liberalism's Public/Private Split, Elizabeth B. Mensch, Alan David Freeman

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No abstract provided.

Religion, Revival, And The Ruling Class: A Critical History Of Trinity Church, Elizabeth B. Mensch

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No abstract provided.

Reflections On Labor, Power, And Society, James B. Atleson

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No abstract provided.

The Oven Bird's Song: Insiders, Outsiders, And Personal Injuries In An American Community, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

In "Sander County" Illinois, concerns about litigiousness in the local population tended to focus on personal injury suits, although such cases were very rarely brought. This article explores the roots of these concerns in the ideology of the rural community and in the reactions of many residents to social, cultural, and economic changes that created a pervasive sense of social disintegration and loss. Personal injury claims are contrasted with contract actions, which were far more numerous yet were generally viewed with approval and did not give rise to perceptions of litigiousness or greed. The distinction is explained in terms of …

Notes Toward An Intimate, Opinionated, And Affectionate History Of The Conference On Critical Legal Studies, John Henry Schlegel

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No abstract provided.

Greatness Thrust Upon Them: Class Biases In American Law, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

A common view of our present society is that it is largely egalitarian and classless. This paper proposes that this conception of an egalitarian and classless society belies reality. It argues that there is a dominant class of leaders in government, labor, and business who are characterized by their organizational skills and their technical expertise, and who have more in common with one another that they have with the respective constituencies in whose name they exercise power. It further argues that this class, in effect, is able to wield power to control the structure of society and the legal system …

Language, Audience, And The Transformation Of Disputes, Lynn Mather, Barbara Yngvesson

Journal Articles

This article develops an analytic framework for comparing dispute processing within a single institution and across different cultures, by focusing on the transformation of disputes. Case studies from diverse nonwestern and western settings are examined to show how disputes change as they are processed in response to the interests of various participants. Disputants, supporters, third parties, and relevant publics seek to rephrase and thus transform a dispute by imposing established categories for classifying events and relationships (narrowing), or by developing a framework which challenges established categories (expansion). Disputes may be expanded by adding new issues, by enlarging the arena of …

Some Determinants Of The Method Of Case Disposition: Decision-Making By Public Defenders In Los Angeles, Lynn M. Mather

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No abstract provided.

The Aftermath Of Baker V. Carr—An Adventure In Judicial Experimentation, James B. Atleson

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No abstract provided.