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Justice as a concept has permeated sociolegal scholarship in the U.S. since the founding of Law and Society as a field in the mid 1960s. Much of this scholarship has focused on theoretically driven areas of justice, and here we consider empirically how such concepts have been mobilized in prominent law and society journals from their inception through 2014. Based on a meta-analysis of 438 articles from Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and Law & Policy, we present a typology of the forms of justice represented in sociolegal scholarship and describe how justice concepts are used and to what ends. We find that the justice ideas presented and how they are conceptualized and operationalized is highly contextualized and perspectival, and the perspectives represented are limited. We reflect on these findings and the first fifty years of sociolegal research in the U.S. and offer suggestions for the future.

Recent debate over integrating women into U.S. military combat units presents an opportunity to examine the gender identities and experiences of women in the military. Here, we examine the context-dependent prominence of intersecting identities including work role and gender ascribed to female soldiers in Special Operations. Using a mixed methods approach, based on 28 focus groups with 198 soldiers and a survey conducted with 1701 men and 214 women, we argue that female soldiers’ experiences refute their male colleagues’ assumptions regarding their ability to serve in combat units. The experience of identity in the workplace is different for men and women because women experience fluidity in their identity depending on with whom they are interacting and where interactions occur, whereas men experience and understand gender identity as a fixed, static trait. Although women experience the fluidity of their gender identity based on context, their male colleagues remain oblivious to the contextual nature of gender identity while also maintaining their authority in policing the boundaries of gender in the military context. Our research adds nuance to literature on identity, demonstrating the fluctuating nature of ascribed identity, which shines light on the socially constructed, artificial barriers to women’s ascension in the workplace.

By conceptualizing street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) as the ultimate policy makers, Michael Lipsky (1980) focused attention on the interaction between citizens and the state at the organizational front lines. In subsequent years, research on SLBs provided significant insight into the interactions of SLBs and citizens. In particular, scholarship has focused on the inherently autonomous nature of street-level work and the discretion these agents of the state possess. Work in this area has traditionally relied on teachers, social workers, and police officers as sources for empirical study of how formal and informal social structures influence the use of discretion by SLBs. Recent scholarship, and coverage of New York City's stop and frisk policy, has renewed interest in the role that SLBs play in constructing justice for the citizens they encounter. In this review, we consider the street-level-bureaucracy scholarship and articulate how insights from this literature inform our current understanding of investigatory police stops, such as those stemming from the stop and frisk policy in place in New York.

Undergraduate programs across the country are working to develop students as scholars, integrating independent scholarly experiences into traditional undergraduate classroom environments (see, e.g. George Mason University's Students as Scholars Quality Enhancement Plan; Boston University’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program; University of Houston’s Learning through Discovery; University of Michigan’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program; etc.). Scholars and universities have touted the benefits of engaging students in research experiences for students as well as faculty. However, there is little empirical work exploring how undergraduate students adapt to their new role as scholars. In this paper, we explore the process of students integrating research into their undergraduate classroom experience. Based on participant observation and pre and postsemester survey data, we discuss the process of students learning as scholars in a capstone Criminology, Law & Society course. We focus on how st...

In problem-solving courts judges are no longer neutral arbitrators in adversarial justice processes. Instead, judges directly engage with court participants. The movement towards problem-solving court models emerges from a collaborative therapeutic jurisprudence framework. While most scholars argue judges are the central courtroom actors within problem-solving courts, we find judges are the stars front-stage, but play a more supporting role backstage. We use Goffman's front-stage-backstage framework to analyze 350 hours of ethnographic fieldwork within five problem-solving courts. Problem-solving courts are collaborative organizations with shifting leadership, based on forum. Understanding how the roles of courtroom workgroup actors adapt under the new court model is foundational for effective implementation of these justice processes.

Problem solving (PS) courts (e.g., drug, family, gang, prostitution, reentry) are becoming more commonplace. Today, PS courts exist or are planned in nearly all of the ninety-four U.S. federal districts. These courts focus on integrating therapeutic jurisprudence into the courtroom environment while emphasizing group decision-making processes among courtroom workgroup members. In this legal setting, courtroom workgroup teams, regularly consisting of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation officers (POs), and treatment providers engage a collective, case management approach to decision making with shared power among team members. However, despite the court’s therapeutic and collaborative design, we find that POs wield powerful influence in decision making. Informed by sixteen months of qualitative fieldwork, including semistructured interviews, observation of courtroom workgroup meetings, and court observations in five federal PS courts in three federal districts, we find that POs exert undetected informational, technical, and relational power within the PS courtroom workgroup. This role and its accompanying power transforms POs into key decision makers, regardless of PS court type, workgroup dynamics, and decision-making style. The POs’ role makes them critical contributors to the outcomes in federal PS courts with important implications for punishment decisions in the federal justice system. With an increasing number of PS courts currently in the planning stages at the federal level, our study has implications for the structure and decision outcomes in these growing courtroom workgroups.

Sociolegal scholars refer to the invocation of law or rules during a dispute as the mobilization of law. Most studies of the mobilization of law focus on the mobilization of law by people in non-official capacities, particularly by persons of relatively low social status or in positions of social disadvantage. Early studies debated the effectiveness of court-centered strategies for social justice, examining whether real social change could be achieved through formal judicial means. Scholars now largely agree that law can be effectively mobilized for social change through both direct formal legal action and the indirect radiating effects of legal mobilization. This is because the influence of law goes beyond the courtroom; rights consciousness and legal mobilization help to transform culture and understandings of social status and power. Currently scholars are turning their attention to the mobilization of law within organizations such as schools and workplaces and the mobilization of rights talk and justice talk in unofficial arenas domestically and internationally.

There is limited scholarship considering how social status factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, and age frame rules in public organizations. Using data collected from semistructured interviews with 49 local government officials, the author argues that there is a paradox of rules. Women and people of color are increasingly entering the ranks of local bureaucracies, but they experience their authority differently than white men. Their claim to authority is challenged more often. Unable to rely on implicit rank and social status as a defense, they must rely instead on official rights and rules. The very meaning of their authority is therefore different: It is more rule and rights based, more formal than informal, more explicit than implicit. Yet, because it is more rule based, formal, and explicit, their authority is also more open to question and challenge, and more resented as an artifice. People of color and women in positions of authority thus face the paradox of rules: They must rely on formal rules as a key basis for their authority, but relying on rules makes their authority seem more artificial than real.

The goals of valuing social equity and using it as a guide in managing public programs are firmly rooted in the Minnowbrook tradition. Although civil rights activists have long fought for equality, attendees at the Minnowbrook I conference in 1968 were among the first in the field of public administration to directly confront societal inequities by asserting that public administrators should, in addition to valuing efficiency and effectiveness, stress the value social equity in the management and distribution of public services. The field's emphasis on social equity continued on through Minnowbrook II and was identified as a key concern during the most recent Minnowbrook III conference. After briefly summarizing discussion on this topic during Minnowbrook III, this article provides an agenda for advancing the field's commitment to social equity. This agenda centers upon clarifying the conceptual parameters of social equity, transforming the place of social equity in academic instruction, and building upon existing themes and methodologies in social equity research. Last, predictions for the role of social equity at a future Minnowbrook IV conference are presented for further consideration.

Thanks to the civil rights movement, women and racial and ethnic minorities increasingly hold positions of public authority—but they experience and exercise this authority differently from white men. Based on 162 narratives collected from 49 US local government officials (city administrators and police), I find that women, minorities, and younger officials in positions of authority face a paradox of rules. Because they have lower social status with the public and within their organizations, they must rely on formal and explicit rules as a key basis for their authority, but such reliance causes their very authority to be questioned. Social status based on implicit assumptions about social identities, including race or ethnicity, sex, and age, originates outside of organizations and has effects society wide. This study shows that social status continues to permeate US local government organizations in both subtle and explicit ways, even in bureaucratic settings that are formally committed to merit and professional norms.