Current LSR Issue

White Americans, on average, do not support Black Lives Matter, while Black Americans generally express strong support. The lack of support among white Americans is striking, and we argue that it matters why this racial gap exists. Using a nationally representative survey collected during the crest of the first wave of widespread attention to the movement, we explore four potential explanations for interracial differences in feelings toward Black Lives Matter. These explanations reflect competing claims made by advocates and opponents of the movement and have distinct implications for understanding the meaning of these racial differences. Two explanations focus on attitudes toward the police, and two focus on racial prejudice. The results suggest that interracial differences in contact with the police mattered to views of the movement, though in opposite ways for white and Black Americans. Support for the movement among Black Americans was not motivated by an animosity toward the police. Ultimately, the lack of white support for Black Lives Matter was best explained by anti-Black animus and racial resentment, reflecting a concern about the threat this contemporary civil rights movement presents to the racial status quo.

Social classifications are increasingly interrelated, far-reaching, and consequential for socioeconomic outcomes. We use the concept of marginalized legal categories to describe how the law disadvantages individuals or groups by transforming inherently ordered social classifications into consequential legal categories, employing intestacy laws as an illustration. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that more than 21% of American families have forms that are marginalized by intestacy classifications, and that such forms are more common among individuals of color and those with less wealth. Yet, many individuals with these family structures hold assets and lack access to intestacy-avoidance mechanisms, giving consequence to the application of these laws. We conclude by discussing implications of legal classification for inequality.

The nondiscrimination clause of the Affordable Care Act, known as Section 1557, formally expanded patients’ civil rights in nearly every healthcare setting in the United States in 2010. Regulations required healthcare organizations to name a person to handle grievances and set up an internal grievance process for resolving them. Drawing on interviews with 58 healthcare grievance handlers, this study examines how healthcare organizations respond to patients’ discrimination complaints. We find that organizations incorporated the new right into preexisting complaint and grievance procedures, treating possible patient civil rights violations as patient experience problems. Grievance handlers smooth over problems using customer service strategies. These procedures diminish the efforts of policymakers to expand civil rights protections in healthcare. For civil rights to provoke real organizational change, discrimination complaints would need to be handled by professionals attuned to rights consciousness.

Prison laws and policies often do not explicitly state the rights and privileges for the individuals residing there. This space is a unique example of where the law-on-the-books meet the law-in-action—a place where “law-in-between” operates in the hands of street-level workers. Using data collected from interviews with restricted housing unit residents and staff in four men’s prisons, this paper examines how the law-in-between operates in a highly structured and punitive environment. Findings reveal agreement among residents and staff regarding general definitions and perceptions of rights, with some similarities regarding what rights are broadly. However, divergence exists in discussion of how rights are accessed in practice.

Diversion programs are increasingly being implemented as an alternative to more severe sanctions, especially within juvenile justice. The civil citation program in Florida is unique in that it diverts juveniles away from the justice system at the earliest decision point of arrest. However, despite its growing use in a number of states, there is little research on the program’s implementation and outcomes, namely, it remains unknown if the program is being applied consistently across communities and for juveniles within those communities. Drawing from the larger sociology of punishment, race, and social control literature, and the associated theories of labeling and social threat, this study employs statewide data from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice to explore the community and individual determinants of civil citation’s use. Consistent with the theoretical arguments of labeling and social threat, the multilevel analysis finds that community and individual characteristics, in particular race, impact the likelihood of receiving civil citation. Implications for future research, theory, and policy are discussed.

Since the 1990s, a sizeable body of case law has formed in the Canadian province of British Columbia in response to disputes over the political leadership of local gurdwaras, the name for Sikh places of worship and assembly. Although the disputes stemmed from religious and political disagreements, the legal issues addressed by the courts concern the proper bureaucratic administration of Sikh institutions that have been legally incorporated as nonprofit “societies.” Through a textual analysis of 55 legal decisions related to gurdwara leadership disputes, this article explains how the courts have decided these cases without ceding the pretense of secular neutrality by mobilizing a series of shifting discursive distinctions between religion, politics, materiality, civil society, and bureaucratic procedure. Building on critical secular and sociolegal theory, this article tracks how law is able to establish and extend the state’s jurisdiction over Sikh practices and populations through its capacity to inscribe and delimit the social and political parameters of religion. It illustrates how this case law serves as a mechanism of racial governance by extending forms of surveillance and legal intervention that work to embed the diasporic practices of Sikh communities within the spheres of Canadian state power.