ABSTRACT In this article we analyze case studies of abortion and marriage equality to identify how judicial discretion and signaling prodded conservative investments in new movement organizations charged with overcoming scientific expertise barriers that had previously stymied conservative policy victories. In doing so, we seek to understand how US judicial commitments to adversarial legalism shape both the incidence of, and responses to, expertise barriers, and how these responses can nullify the power of scientific expertise in “culture war” court cases. We also suggest that the Right's responses to expertise barriers in these cases reflect both their access to significant resources and their tendency to build new institutions instead of working within established ones. Combined, this analysis highlights an understudied, and yet potent form of conservative response to evidence‐based civil rights logics that are central to contemporary culture war cases—particularly those reviewed by the US Supreme Court. It demonstrates the importance of institutional protocols in setting the stage for targeted organizational investments in the American Right's fight against progressive rights.
ABSTRACT This article identifies three central characteristics of collateral consequences policy in the United States, employing a case study of laws limiting the ability of people with conviction records to serve on juries. Collateral consequences, or collateral sanctions, restrict the rights and privileges of people with criminal histories to engage in political, economic, and social activities, and appear to be more severe in the United States than in other democracies. But in the U.S., such policies generally do not impose clear rules on a discrete class of citizens. Instead, they are textually complex , based on laws featuring variation, ambiguity, and sometimes outright indeterminacy. Profoundly shaped by implementation, particularly interpretive decisions made by state and local officials, such policies are procedurally constituted . These two characteristics bring about a third: collateral sanctions enact multiple forms of exclusion . They generate misinformation that appears to prevent many eligible people from participating; they categorically bar some people with backgrounds; and they exclude others only after individualized discretionary evaluation. Better understanding these three attributes of collateral sanctions will help scholars and policymakers appraise their impact more effectively, deepens normative critiques, and points to avenues for reform.
ABSTRACT We examine the reception of Russia's post‐2012 conservative turn by the country's legal academics. Based on a nationally representative survey of 3766 academic lawyers conducted in May–June 2022, we test how demographic, professional, and regional factors influence support for conservative policies. We uncover significant differences across age cohorts and professions: older lawyers, graduates of departmental law schools, and those with law enforcement backgrounds are more supportive of conservative measures, while younger scholars, those involved in international academia, and residents of major cities tend to hold more liberal views. In line with popular opinion, support for “gay propaganda” legislation is uniformly high among legal scholars. In contrast, scholars are critical of state surveillance and compulsory religious education. These findings supplement recent critiques of Karpik and Halliday's “legal complex” theory by demonstrating not only that lawyers may hold diverse and conflicting political values, but also that this variation is systematically associated with different forms of professional socialization, institutional location, and transnational academic engagement. The article thus shows how distinct segments of the legal profession become embedded in broader social and political networks that shape their orientations toward liberal and illiberal legal change. The article also contributes to the broader discussion on the role of legal elites in authoritarian settings by demonstrating that they do not form a united liberal front yet nor are they fully aligned with the conservative state agenda.
ABSTRACT In the United States, a robust data ecosystem aggregates and shares public records about people that may ultimately appear in Internet search results for a person's name. These records can include stigmatizing information and operate outside public policy efforts to conceal negative information from regulated background screening processes. Our study assesses the Internet search results of 225 people who have been charged or convicted of crime to identify patterns for what types of records appear online and for whom. We find that approximately 1 in 5 people in the sample have criminal records on the Internet, which varies by jurisdiction, time since arrest, and severity of offense. We further examine whether being eligible for different types of record “remediation” policies impacts informal Internet search results. We identify 173 people who benefited from criminal record remediation (67 had their entire record sealed). Internet search results for crime information appear even for those with partial remediation (27.4%–42.5%) or fully sealed records (10.4%–20.9%). Our findings point to how a varied informational policy landscape in the United States contributes to the continued existence of public criminal stigma, even amidst efforts to conceal such information from specific contexts.
In April 2014, then-President Barack Obama announced an initiative to grant clemency to thousands of federal prisoners serving long sentences for non-violent crimes, targeting a reduction in racial disparities in drug-crime sentences. Critiques of the initiative's implementation abound, but 1715 people ultimately received clemency-more than under any previous president. We investigate Obama Clemency Initiative outcomes, focusing on the total pool of clemency applicants. Using clemency applicant data from the Office of the Pardon Attorney combined with "inmate locator" data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we construct a dataset of the 20,464 individuals who applied for clemency and had their petitions reviewed during Obama's presidency. After the Initiative was announced, overall demographic patterns of reviewed applicants shifted, becoming increasingly diverse in terms of race and age (but not sex). Notably, the proportion of White petitioners who applied for and received clemency more than doubled, while the proportion of Black petitioners who applied for and received clemency declined, suggesting that the Initiative's aims of equity were not fully realized across racial groups. We consider the theoretical implications of these patterns for understanding the role of clemency in the legal system and its potential as a tool of policy reform.
