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Paper #1 I analyze the symbolic and material production of racial inequality through formal law and on-the-ground judicial decision-making in heirs property cases involving partition sales. I interrogate how decision-making in these cases permit legal professionals to wield power, legitimate the legal profession as an institution, and reinforce disadvantage for Black Americans, using a rich dataset of case decisions from Pennsylvania and South Carolina from 1840-present. I identify particular mechanisms and circumstances in which the judiciary might opt for one mechanism or strategy over another. The judiciary showed a marked lack of comprehension as to how the weaponization of partition actions simultaneously espouse ideals of formal legal equality and, in practice, treat Black families facing loss of their ancestral property inequitably. I identify three strategies judges deploy to justify their actions as equitable and legitimate and to remain within the letter of the law, while reinforcing racial hierarchies positioning whites as superior: the whitewashing of the law, the strategic use of legal language, and logic to advance a particular vision of the law and to justify its position as THE arbiter of the law, paternalism towards marginalized groups and individuals, racial animus, and imposition of a white moral ideology on Black families. Each of these strategies decontextualizes the legal-moral values of fairness, equity and neutrality and makes these legal-moral values appear inherent to the legal system and natural. These strategies offer insight as to how the legal, economic and political systems establish and legitimate a racial hierarchy that have oppressed and subjugated Black Americans since the beginning of American history. The refusal of the judiciary to recognize the harms of this historical backdrop serve to retrench inequality in the American experience long after Emancipation. Paper #2 I examine the role of the legal maxim of ignorantia juris non

This dissertation examines the factors that affect public support for coalitions between prodemocracy advocates and policy-based movements, such as land, labor, and environmental movements under authoritarian rule. First, I argue that when the two types of movements actively team up in a coalition to seek significant regime reforms to resolve the policy issues, (1) the policy-based movement’s assignment of causal responsibility for its grievances and (2) the public perception of which component of the coalition-based collective action frame is more dominant may influence public opinion towards the coalition. Using two online survey experiments administered on a sample of 1300 Vietnamese respondents, I find that (1) blame attribution does not influence public attitudes and that (2) the policy frame is perceived to dominate a policy-prodemocracy coalition, which moves support for the coalition to the baseline support for the policy movement. My mediation analysis suggests that this is because policy protesters are perceived to dominate the coalition. Second, I argue that when prodemocracy advocates endorse a policy movement without apparently building a coalition with policy protesters, the public reduces their support for the policy movement. Drawing on an online survey experiment administered to 1080 Vietnamese respondents, I demonstrate that being endorsed by prodemocracy advocates reduces support for protests because prodemocracy endorsements lead to a reduced perception that the protests are legal and a reduced perception that the protests are “moral.” Taken together, the results of the dissertation suggest that public support for a policy-prodemocracy coalition may depend on the visibility of prodemocracy advocates in the coalition. In an active coalition in which policy issues are more dominant and prodemocracy activists are less visible, the public does not oppose the alliance. On the other hand, in a passive coalition where the public perceives that prodemocr