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Who is ultimately responsible for the harms that befall us? Corporations who make dangerous products, or the consumers who use them? The answer to this question has a profound impact on how personal injury lawyers screen products liability cases. In this paper, I analyze results from an experimental vignette study in which 83 lawyers were asked to evaluate a hypothetical products liability case. Half of the lawyers practice in states considered to be difficult jurisdictions for the practice of personal injury law due to tort reform and conservative political climates (Texas and Colorado), while the other half work in states that have been relatively unaffected by tort reform and are considered to be more "plaintiff friendly" (Pennsylvania and Massachusetts). While lawyers in reform states and non-reform states were equally likely to accept the hypothetical case with which they were presented, they approached the case in different ways, used different theories, and made different arguments in order to justify their acceptance of the case. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines social hierarchy within the plaintiffs' bar to consider the effects that organizational cultures and lawyers' social and status characteristics have on case evaluation. The initial task of this paper is to identify distinctions among lawyers based on such characteristics as experience, case load, gender, and reputation. I then ask how these characteristics affect case screening. I explore these questions, and their implications for citizen justice claims, in a comparative study based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 83 products liability and medical malpractice lawyers in four U.S. states, representing two types of state-level legal cultures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many labor movement scholars have emphasized the importance of living wage campaigns in the context of the current struggles to revitalize the U.S. labor movement. Although assertions of the positive contributions of living wage campaigns abound, there are few empirical assessments of the effects of living wage campaigns on organized labor. In this paper, we use a variety of statistical techniques to explore the effects of living wage campaigns on one important, albeit limited, dimension of the revitalization movement in U.S. labor: labor organizing within the context of the NLRB. We analyze the effects of living wage campaigns on the occurrence, number, size, and outcomes of union representation elections conducted with the institutional framework of the National Labor Relations Board. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do lawyers decide what constitutes a "good" client? How does that definition change across legal environments? This paper explores the social construction of clients and their claims through an analysis of the processes by which plaintiffs' personal injury lawyers screen potential cases and clients. Whereas previous research has focused nearly exclusively on individual-level cost-benefit analyses associated with the screening process, this project considers the impacts that broader, state-level legal cultures have on the decisions lawyers make about which cases they will accept and which clients they will represent. I explore these questions, and their implications for citizen justice claims, in a comparative study based on indepth qualitative interviews and ethnographic field observations of 80 products liability and medical malpractice lawyers in four U.S. states, representing two types of state-level legal cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many U.S. cities adopted living wage ordinances (LWOs) in the late 1990s, despite the trend of urban neo-liberal restructuring. Drawing on social movement and neo-institutionalist theories, we present analyses of the adoption of LWOs, and the effects of LWO adoptions on labor union revitalization. Specifically, we ask: What explains the spread of LWOs despite urban neo-liberalism and the decline of organized labor? Secondly, how do LWO adoptions contribute to union revitalization? We find that LWOs succeed in cities characterized by government outsourcing, public sector unions, and community organizational networks. LWOs contribute to union revitalization, but these effects appear to be limited to public sector unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some social theorists have argued that both gender and sexual identity are accomplished through on-going and routine bodily performances. These bodily performances of gender and sexuality constitute a form of ?identity work,? or a means by which people construct and negotiate personal identities. The practices that produce these performances include beauty labor, defined as the time, money, and mental and physical energy that individuals invest in their physical appearance. In this paper, our primary aim is to understand how women construct and negotiate personal identities through their beauty labor practices using qualitative data from 85 in-depth interviews with women in a medium-sized Southwestern city. Our data suggest that investments in beauty labor and bodily satisfaction produce a sense of identity for most women. Some women deliberately perform limited beauty labor. For these women, not engaging in beauty labor is often a deliberate form of identity work, with different implications depending on whether they are ultimately satisfied or dissatisfied with their appearances. In contrast, some women engage in substantial beauty labor as a strategy for constructing or projecting a unique identity. Some of these women actively employ beauty labor to generate a positive self-image, while others feel thwarted by their inability to live up to a desired aesthetic. The relationships between beauty labor, satisfaction, and identity work, and with race and sexual orientation, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For both men and women, attractiveness is an asset that impacts many stages of the employment process including hiring, wages, performance evaluation, and promotion. Moreover, many employers attempt to increase the attractiveness of their employees by regulating their employees' (and potential employees') appearances in ways that conform to dominant notions of attractive femininity and masculinity. These attempts range from mandating uniforms or certain modes of dress, to proscribing certain hair styles or hair lengths, to formally or informally regulating employees' body shapes and sizes, to simply not hiring, not promoting, or firing individuals whose appearance does not conform to an employer's ideas about attractiveness. Over the last four decades, U.S. courts have deliberated on a large number of appearance-related cases, as employees have resisted these attempts at appearance discrimination. While employers generally have the right to control employees' appearance, workers have recourse to discriminatory actions through legal avenues such as Title VII, the ADA, and various pieces of state legislation. In this paper, we document trends in appearance-related lawsuits spanning four decades and examine how U.S. courts have protected or failed to protect employer's appearance-related practices. A number of trends emerge from our analyses. First, the number of appearance-based discrimination lawsuits has more than tripled during this time frame. There has been an overall rise in appearance-related cases that were initiated over the 35-year study period. Second, the suits follow general patterns over each decade, both in terms of who files cases and on what basis of appearance the employee is alleging discrimination. With regard to who brings cases, we find that the majority of cases in the 1970s were initiated by men, which is rather ironic since federal legislation was implemented to protect minorities and oppressed groups. We also see an increase in transgender plaintiffs over time. The data also point to differences in the types of cases that are brought. For example, 1970s cases generally dealt with men's hair length, 1980s cases with sexually revealing dress codes for women, 1990s with race- and religion-based suits, and the 2000s saw an expansion of suits related to weight, transgenderism, and "deviant" appearances. We analyze each of these trends in the context of contemporary Western society's conceptions of hegemonic beauty, particularly for women, as well as the expanded visibility, rights, and empowerment of traditionally disadvantaged groups including the disabled, racial and ethnic minorities, lesbians, gays, and transgendered people over time. We highlight these key trends through a discussion of illustrative cases, discuss the social significance of our findings, and suggest directions for future research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and activists have long been concerned about the plight of low-wage workers and their prospects for unionization, since unionized workers fare better than non-union workers on many measures of job quality. Yet few low-wage workers are unionized, and many resist unionization efforts. Why is this the case? Under what conditions are low-wage workers likely to express willingness to organize? Many studies highlight dissatisfaction with the workplace as a major factor influencing workers' decisions to join unions. However, the complexities of dissatisfaction with the workplace remain largely unexamined, including why some workers are dissatisfied while others are not, and what conditions are likely to lead to job dissatisfaction.We use the case of homeless day labor workers to better understand the relationship between workplace dissatisfaction and unionization prospects, using the lens of rights awareness to frame the analysis. We argue that the relationship between working conditions and job dissatisfaction is mediated by the extent to which workers are knowledgeable about their rights as workers, what we refer to as rights awareness. Our results show that day labor workers who are familiar with basic labor law and their rights as workers are those who are most likely to find their working conditions dissatisfying. As a result, they are the workers most likely to express interest in joining a union. We analyze surveys with 126 homeless day labor workers in Tucson, Arizona to examine the relationship among working conditions, job dissatisfaction, and interest in unionization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do lawyers decide the value of clients and the worth of cases? Personal injury lawyers have a large amount of discretion in deciding which cases to accept and which clients to represent, but it is not always immediately obvious to lawyers which cases and clients are worth pursuing. During the screening process, lawyers try to determine, among other things, the "worth" and the "value" of potential cases and clients. In a sense, then, the qualities that make for "good" cases and clients are socially constructed. In this paper, I examine this social construction process, paying particular attention to the ways in which tort reform impacts this process and lawyers' evaluations of "good" and "valuable" cases and clients. Based on in-depth interviews with 83 personal injury lawyers in four U.S. states, I find that lawyers construct the value of cases and clients in part based on their perceptions of the legal, political, and social environments in which they are embedded. Thus, "good" cases or clients in one type of environment are not necessarily considered to be good in a different environment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze results from an experimental vignette study in which 83 personal injury lawyers were asked to evaluate a hypothetical products liability case. Half of the lawyers practice in states considered to be difficult jurisdictions for the practice of personal injury law due to tort reform and conservative political climates (Texas and Colorado), while the other half work in states that have been relatively unaffected by tort reform and are considered to be more "plaintiff friendly" (Pennsylvania and Massachusetts). While lawyers in reform states and non-reform states were equally likely to accept the hypothetical case with which they were presented, they approached the case in different ways, used different theories of liability, and made different arguments in order to justify their acceptance of the case. I close the paper with a discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of these differences in case screening and framing, including implications for access to justice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how tort reform affects the ways in which medical malpractice and product liability lawyers decide which cases they will accept and which clients they will represent. Findings are based on in-depth interviews with 83 lawyers in four U.S. states (two which have passed a great deal of tort reform and two which have not). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several scholars have examined the consequences of ambiguous law for organizations, and in turn, for workers. Ambiguously written laws have been found to be associated with low levels of policy implementation on the part of governments and high levels of symbolic, rather than substantive, compliance on the part of organizations and individuals subject to law. On their own or in combination, these often lead to lower levels of intended benefits for those individuals and communities that the laws were designed to serve. Yet, little research has explored what leads to such ambiguity in the first place, and the factors that lead to ambiguity in the law have gone virtually unexplored. Why are some laws ambiguous, leaving room for symbolic compliance and narrow enforcement, while other laws are not? In this paper, I examine 70 cases of one type of municipal-level law to explore the factors that lead some laws to be written in an ambiguous, vague manner, and others to be written with specificity and clarity. I have chosen for this analysis living wage ordinances. Living wage laws require a subsection of employers in a city to pay all or some of their employees a wage rate that is higher than the current federal or state minimum. They are constructed at the local level, with an extremely (and surprising) low level of diffusion. That is, cities do not tend to construct their laws based on the laws of other cities. Thus, living wage laws are ideal for this type of study because they offer an opportunity to explore a variety of factors that influence the written language of law *comparatively*. While I focus on characterstics of the social movement campaigns that contributed to policy passage, I also consider structural, social, and demographic characteristics of cities as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]