Lawyers instruct their clients to make performative and fleeting modifications in comportment to appease judges or officers. But how do they guide their clients to routinize everyday behaviors and lifestyles seen as desirable and respectable by the state? Expanding on theories of social control, nonstate governance, and lawyering, this paper considers the role of lawyers who guide mixed-status couples applying for marriage-based green card and naturalization petitions in the United States. Interviews with immigration attorneys, paralegals, and nonprofit advocates reveal their three-step strategy to shape intimate dimensions of mixed-status couples' lives that connote marital legitimacy. First, lawyers translate immigration law into personalized checklists that function as the blueprint of marriage that couples must follow. Then, lawyers instruct and correct their clients' family behaviors so that they are enacted and documented in compliance with vague immigration law as interpreted by the archetypal immigration officer. Crucially, lawyers help couples routinize and painstakingly archive these curated lifestyles for ongoing adjudication. Findings suggest that nonstate actors like immigration lawyers are more than intermediaries who broker and coach; they become domestic counselors who, as indirect agents of the state, coerce subjects toward acculturation.
Resumen ¿Cómo reconcilian los académicos del ámbito socio-jurídico, que comparan las sanciones monetarias con “sacarle sangre a un nabo” o “sacarle sangre a una piedra,” estas expresiones con el hecho de que las multas y recargos constituyen una industria en expansión? Abordamos este enigma enfocándonos en lo que tal vez sea la experiencia más común con sanciones monetarias entre la población: las multas de estacionamiento. Dado que las multas de estacionamiento se adjudican en un ámbito legal fundamentalmente distinto al de las sanciones penales – que dominan la atención académica –, nos preguntamos si estos resultados pueden extenderse más allá del ámbito penal hacia el municipal. Usando a Chicago como estudio de caso, nuestra investigación analiza los determinantes estructurales de 11.3 millones de multas emitidas entre 2013 y 2017. Aplicamos una serie de modelos de conteo para predecir las tasas de incidencia de las multas a nivel de tracto censal, así como para estimar cuántas estuvieron sujetas a sanciones por impago. Lo que encontramos evidencia disparidades racializadas en cuanto a quiénes son el objetivo de estas sanciones y quiénes resultan más perjudicados por ellas. Para interpretar estos resultados, articulamos ideas clave de la teoría crítica de la raza empírica junto con desarrollos recientes de la teoría de la depredación.
& iquest;C & oacute;mo reconcilian los acad & eacute;micos del & aacute;mbito socio-jur & iacute;dico, que comparan las sanciones monetarias con "sacarle sangre a un nabo" o "sacarle sangre a una piedra," estas expresiones con el hecho de que las multas y recargos constituyen una industria en expansi & oacute;n? Abordamos este enigma enfoc & aacute;ndonos en lo que tal vez sea la experiencia m & aacute;s com & uacute;n con sanciones monetarias entre la poblaci & oacute;n: las multas de estacionamiento. Dado que las multas de estacionamiento se adjudican en un & aacute;mbito legal fundamentalmente distinto al de las sanciones penales - que dominan la atenci & oacute;n acad & eacute;mica -, nos preguntamos si estos resultados pueden extenderse m & aacute;s all & aacute; del & aacute;mbito penal hacia el municipal. Usando a Chicago como estudio de caso, nuestra investigaci & oacute;n analiza los determinantes estructurales de 11.3 millones de multas emitidas entre 2013 y 2017. Aplicamos una serie de modelos de conteo para predecir las tasas de incidencia de las multas a nivel de tracto censal, as & iacute; como para estimar cu & aacute;ntas estuvieron sujetas a sanciones por impago. Lo que encontramos evidencia disparidades racializadas en cuanto a qui & eacute;nes son el objetivo de estas sanciones y qui & eacute;nes resultan m & aacute;s perjudicados por ellas. Para interpretar estos resultados, articulamos ideas clave de la teor & iacute;a cr & iacute;tica de la raza emp & iacute;rica junto con desarrollos recientes de la teor & iacute;a de la depredaci & oacute;n.
While legal mobilization through litigation and legislative reform has been widely examined, less is known about how political and social actors engage constitution-making processes to advance or restrict rights. Latin America provides a particularly relevant context to study this phenomenon, given the region's frequent constitutional replacements and the growing tendency of activists to use constitution-making itself when other institutional channels prove unresponsive. This article analyzes Chile's 2021-2022 Constitutional Convention - the first phase of the 2020-2023 constitutional replacement process. Focusing on the constitutional mobilization of anti-abortion rights groups, we examine how, despite an unfavorable political opportunity structure and public opinion, they sought to roll back reproductive rights advances. Drawing on interviews, official records, protest event data, and public opinion surveys, we identify three main strategies employed by anti-abortion rights groups: reframing opposition to abortion within constitutional, natural law, and international human rights discourses; bundling conservative causes with broader appeals to protect life and property; and leveraging the referendum campaign to cast the draft constitution as a threat to national identity. Our findings demonstrate how constitutional replacement processes create distinct arenas for anti-rights mobilization, thereby contributing to the discussion on the "right against rights" in constitution-making contexts.
Law and society scholars have examined how nonlegal actors, or "legal intermediaries," construct the meaning of compliance as they translate law into organizational practice and policy. This article applies the legal intermediaries framework to analyze how higher education professionals navigate federal and state immigration law to mitigate the impact of illegality on undocumented students at the institutional level. We find that staff work within the underdefined, flexible, and often complex dimensions of immigration law by developing "creative solutions," or university-specific policies and practices that interpret and apply existing legal frameworks in ways that broaden access to opportunities for undocumented students. Staff proceed through four steps within this process: developing an understanding of one's legal and professional context, implementing and troubleshooting solutions, raising awareness and mobilizing support across and beyond the institution, and institutionalizing workarounds. In the process, staff shape broader understandings and organizational treatment of (il)legality at their respective institutions. Through this analysis, we extend the literature on legal intermediaries to the immigration context. We also refine the processes involved in the organizational intermediation of compliance and identify the set of contextual factors that may facilitate or hinder the creative solutions process within and beyond higher education.
Why do poor caregivers resist rights-based framings of their situation even when directly exposed to institutionalized rights discourses? Drawing on 44 in-depth interviews with caregivers, care recipients, and officials from Chile Cuida, a state assistance program grounded in the right-to-care framework, this article examines the rights consciousness of long-term, intensive caregivers in Santiago, Chile. We find that, despite significant political exposure to rights discourses, caregivers consistently frame their experiences in terms of familial duty rather than entitlement. Building on rights-consciousness literature, we identify three mechanisms that explain this pattern: cultural incompatibility, whereby caregivers resist framings that appear to contradict familial obligations; familial overspilling, whereby family-based relational expectations are projected onto bureaucratic actors; and bridging strategies, whereby caregivers invoke alternative cultural sources of entitlement - particularly notions of state duty toward the poor - to justify receiving assistance without challenging familial dominance. We argue that discursive exposure to rights frameworks is insufficient when it confronts deeply settled familial cultural repertoires, with significant implications for care policy in the region. & iquest;Por qu & eacute; los cuidadores en situaci & oacute;n de vulnerabilidad resisten los marcos de derechos para interpretar su situaci & oacute;n, incluso cuando est & aacute;n directamente expuestos a discursos institucionales sobre derechos? A partir de 44 entrevistas en profundidad con cuidadores, personas en situaci & oacute;n de dependencia y funcionarios del programa Chile Cuida - un programa de asistencia estatal fundado en el marco del derecho al cuidado - este art & iacute;culo examina la conciencia de derechos de cuidadores intensivos de larga duraci & oacute;n en Santiago de Chile. Encontramos que, pese a una exposici & oacute;n pol & iacute;tica a discursos de derechos, los cuidadores enmarcan consistentemente sus experiencias en t & eacute;rminos de deber familiar. A partir de la literatura sobre conciencia de derechos, identificamos tres mecanismos que explican este patr & oacute;n: la incompatibilidad cultural, mediante la cual los cuidadores resisten marcos de referencia que perciben como contradictorios con sus obligaciones familiares; la infiltraci & oacute;n familiar, mediante el cual las expectativas relacionales propias del & aacute;mbito familiar se proyectan sobre los actores burocr & aacute;ticos; y las estrategias de compatibilizaci & oacute;n, mediante las cuales los cuidadores invocan fuentes culturales alternativas de titularidad - en particular, la noci & oacute;n de que el Estado tiene un deber con los m & aacute;s pobres - para justificar la recepci & oacute;n de asistencia sin cuestionar la primac & iacute;a familiar. Argumentamos que la exposici & oacute;n discursiva a marcos de derechos resulta insuficiente cuando se enfrenta a repertorios culturales de la familia profundamente arraigados, con implicancias relevantes para las pol & iacute;ticas de cuidado en la regi & oacute;n.
This essay assesses Susan Sturm's What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions as a major contribution to Critical Race Theory, socio-legal theory, and the practice of institutional anti-racism. It argues that Sturm's central achievement is to reframe anti-racism not as a discrete legal remedy or diversity initiative, but as a sustained institutional practice of navigating paradox. Drawing on Sturm's earlier work on complex discrimination, the essay shows how her critique of formal adjudication and liability-centered antidiscrimination law develops into a broader theory of organizational transformation. Institutions, Sturm argues, are not race-neutral arenas; they reproduce racial hierarchy through norms, routines, role structures, and patterns of interaction that often appear ordinary or neutral. The essay emphasizes three linked dimensions of Sturm's intervention. First, anti-racism requires working through contradictions rather than resolving them: race must be acknowledged because it is materially consequential, yet racial categories must also be destabilized because they help reproduce hierarchy. Second, institutions often become trapped in cycles of reform and retrenchment, producing what Sturm calls "Groundhog Day" dynamics in which diversity initiatives generate temporary movement but fail to alter underlying structures. Third, meaningful transformation depends on trust, linked fate, stretch collaboration, and organizational catalysts that can create durable forms of shared inquiry and collective action.
Organizations are often drawn into the contested work of criminal law enforcement. Through compulsory process and mandatory reporting laws, governments routinely conscript organizations such as hospitals, banks, and schools into assisting in surveillance activities whose legitimacy is socially contested. In recent years, conscription has been particularly pronounced with online platform companies, whose extensive collections of user data make them frequent sources of information and evidence for law enforcement agencies. How do actors in platform companies navigate compliance with such contested laws? While neoinstitutional theories of law emphasize how perceived compliance can protect organizational legitimacy, this article shows how perceived compliance with contested laws can also undermine it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with legal and operations staff for platform companies and law enforcement agents, this article explains how perceived compliance with contested laws can give rise to a legitimacy dilemma that organizational actors manage through symbolic ambivalence: compliance practices that signal both an organization's responsiveness to a law, as well as its independence from the aims, consequences, and institutions associated with the law. The article also suggests organizational and legal conditions that shape how platform actors engage in symbolic ambivalence. These findings extend neoinstitutional theory by showing that the relationship between perceived compliance and legitimacy is not straightforward, but contingent, and by explaining how organizational actors manage the legitimacy dilemma brought about by that contingency.
While immigration status is often arbitrarily ascribed, the moral meanings of undocumented status are central in the growing polarization and punitiveness of immigration politics in the United States. How do political actors construct the moral meanings of undocumented status and reason their preferred redresses? Existing substantialist approach's search for a coherent list of moral traits is unable to locate the basis of such construction. Through interviews with a multiracial group of 65 Democratic and Republican activists, this paper identifies the relational meaning-making process underlying the construction of migrant morality, which I label as "Folk Durkheimian." I find that, like Durkheim, activists believe that law exists to uphold social solidarities and therefore legal categories mark people as belonging or threatening to the social body. I further find that activists construct belonging and threat along two axes: similarity and division of labor. As both Democratic and Republican activists construct migrants as simultaneously belonging and threatening on different axes, both prefer the ambivalent redress of pathways to citizenship for a limited subset of migrants. This Folk Durkheimian understanding advances a relational and integrated framework for understanding morality, group politics, and punitive attitudes.
What does it mean to be a citizen? To be equal in birth and stature as others born in the same land? How does law answer these questions and are the answers satisfying? Have the goalposts of citizenship shifted such that old, exlusionary notions of citizenship based on wealth, race, and sex now dangerously infect our society? These questions and this Essay are derived from the 2025 Presidential Address given at the Law and Society annual meeting.
What does conducting law and society scholarship have anything to do with wilting blooms? In this essay, Lynette J. Chua makes the connection between the two through her reminder to law and society scholars to study the taken-for-granted, an intellectual project that has become all the more urgent as politicians and activists contest concepts such as citizenship, gender, territories, religion and rights. She also calls upon fellow law and society scholars to be humble - for the significance and impact of our research, like flowers, could come and go with the seasons.
This essay compares and contrasts the disciplines of sociology and law and society. I then outline how sociology can enrich law and society with stronger theory-building and better linkages of theoretical frameworks to empirical data. I next consider how law and society can enrich sociology, including by encouraging sociologists to take seriously law's constitutive nature and to engage more directly with their work's normative implications. Throughout, I draw primarily on research on U.S. immigration enforcement, which is both my area of study and a site of rich cross-pollination between the two fields.
Although "law" is the primary common ground in law and society scholarship, many of us are trained in other, complementary academic disciplines, which give us unique perspectives into the interaction between law and society. How can we employ these perspectives in ways that help us effectively speak to our various disciplinary audiences? In this short essay, I draw from my own experiences navigating professional life in the academy to explore how my engagement with law and society scholarship has helped me navigate scholarly life between law and anthropology.
This commentary is part of a series of responses to Michele Goodwin's 2025 LSA presidential address.
Providing pro bono legal services is an important professional obligation that ensures that people who cannot afford representation still realize their rights. Unlike impact litigation, which seeks to overturn unjust laws or create new rights, pro bono direct legal services are not typically seen as oriented toward creating social change. Drawing on longitudinal interviews with thirty-six lawyers and non-lawyer legal volunteers, this article explores how bearing witness became a mechanism that blended pro bono services with social movement-like collective action to transform direct legal services within two liminal legal environments, the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration detention. These activities included (1) asserting and publicizing truth in the face of misconceptions and misinformation so the American public understood what was occurring and demanded policy change, (2) recruiting more volunteers to assist asylum seekers and in turn speak out, and (3) documenting the human impact of immigration laws and policies to ensure future harms would not occur. Because interviewees took part in up to three waves of interviews between 2019 and 2023, I also address the perceived outcomes of these efforts, including that interviewees felt that they increased knowledge and shifted some individuals' perspectives.
