Coming in hot off the presses

Thanks, Josh! Your book is so important and inspiring as a work of scholarship. Really appreciated the chance to engage deeply with it in this article

Ha! Thanks, Michael. Was so glad to have the chance to engage closely with your book in this article. I had students in my grad course read your book this year, and they loved it!

This article outlines a relational theory of legal inequality through a review of recent studies of crime, law, and deviance. I argue that three relational mechanisms—claims-making, social closure, and exploitation—sharpen insight into the way material (e.g., police services, jobs in prison) and symbolic (e.g., legal recognition, dignity) resources are unequally distributed within and between organizations in the criminal legal system. While the criminal legal literature has long sought to document inequality among social groups subordinated within legal organizations (e.g., the poor or people of color in courts), a relational theory expands inquiry in two novel directions. First, future research could deepen analysis of criminal legal organizations as workplaces, not just as social control institutions. As workplaces, legal organizations may reproduce inequality between legal professionals (e.g., prosecutors, public defenders, social workers), with implications for those subject to the law. Second, future research could further examine how field-level relations between organizations (e.g., public defender's office, reentry center, victim services unit) reproduce inequality through competition over resources. Relations between organizations determine the kinds of resources available for distribution within organizations. I conclude with several propositions for future research into the relational mechanisms that reproduce and challenge inequality in the criminal legal system.

Here’s the article’s abstract:

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

That cutting-edge research includes the work of many amazing scholars here, including @hschoenfeld.bsky.social @joesoss.bsky.social @joshpage.bsky.social @tonykcheng.bsky.social @mgibsonlight.bsky.social @victorerikray.bsky.social and @daventholt.bsky.social

A Relational Theory of Inequality in the Criminal Legal System This article outlines a relational theory of legal inequality through a review of recent studies of crime, law, and deviance. I argue that three relational mechanisms—claims-making, social closure, a...

New article theorizing the relational mechanisms that reproduce criminal legal inequalities. Come for the theory; stay for the review of cutting-edge research showing how social closure, exploitation, and claims-making drive inequality under the law

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Forthcoming in American Criminal Law Review! @georgetownlaw.bsky.social

Screenshot of title and abstract of article, “Reconsideration of Secure Communities rollout reveals preemptive local-federal cooperation in immigration enforcement.”

NEW (and open access!) in @pnas.org:

We find that Secure Communities triggered “preemptive” immigration enforcement, increasing detentions, transfers, & removals even before formal county activation.

Joint with @cvargas100.bsky.social and @immigrationlab.bsky.social

www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Thanks for sharing!

Precisely this.

As Coates wrote about him preciously, “[Trump's] ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power.”

Thank you! Glad the framing resonates. Some tenants in our study came to understand the terms of their settlements, but others (esp if overwhelmed by the process) did not fully understand the agreements they signed or the consequences (eg ex parte writ of possession) if they were unable to abide

Thank you! I hope you find it useful

Abstract Many legal disputes are resolved through settlement. The dominant theory explaining settlements – known as “bargaining in the shadow of the law” – assumes that litigants are informed, rational actors inclined to bargain toward a settlement prior to court proceedings. Yet many settlements are negotiated after litigants have appeared in court expecting to go to trial. This article argues that court organizational mechanisms play an undertheorized role in facilitating settlement agreements. To build theory on organizational mechanisms, we examine the case of eviction settlements. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews in a California eviction court, we find that organizational rules and workgroup norms funnel mostly unrepresented tenants – sometimes, in coercive ways – into unregulated hallway conversations with landlord attorneys and/or participation in the court’s mediation program. Through relational interactions with legal professionals in these organizational spaces, tenants are taught the risks of trial and the benefits of settlement. As a result, most tenants in our sample come to recognize their legal culpability and view settlement agreements as legitimate, even as their negotiated settlements reproduce their housing insecurity. We discuss implications for bargaining theory and research on housing insecurity.

How do eviction courts funnel tenants into settlements with landlords that often reproduce housing insecurity? Check out our new article in LSR on the organizational mechanisms that compel settlements in a California eviction court.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Jonathan Simon

Jotwell Crim:
Jonathan Simon, Burden in the Court! The Spatial Powers of Courts and Their Environment, JOTWELL (Feb. 23, 2026), crim.jotwell.com/burden-in-th....

Grateful to Jonathan Simon for his review of our @socservreview.bsky.social article on the “spatial burdens” of state bureaucracies in Jotwell (@jotwell.bsky.social)!

crim.jotwell.com/burden-in-th...

Pioneering Center for the Study of Law and Society still blazing new trails to show how law operates in the real world Its 65th anniversary conference addressed criminal justice, inequality, democracy and civil society, and lessons for and from the legal profession.

“Throughout the conference, panelists noted the importance of public institutions, and successfully working within them, to a functional democracy.”

Appreciated the chance to be part of this thought-provoking conference @ucberkeleylaw.bsky.social!

www.law.berkeley.edu/article/pion...

Iran After Khamenei An interview with sociologist Asef Bayat on the U.S.-Israeli war, democratic opposition to the Islamic Republic, and the country’s uncertain future.

“External powers pursue their own strategic and geopolitical objectives, and these are likely, sooner or later, to conflict with the aspirations of a genuinely democratic Iran.”

www.bostonreview.net/articles/ira...

Abstract which states: The problem of the Twentieth Century was the problem of the color line. That problem, however, never seriously preoccupied the Legal Realists. This may come as disappointment to many scholars today who see the Realists, particularly those who critiqued courts, free markets, and oligarchic power, as intellectual ancestors. Then again, the answer depends on who we count as a Realist. The great writer, activist, and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois saw his career unfold and unwind alongside the development of Legal Realism. Though he is better remembered as a political theorist and historian, his work also contained theorizing about law that tracked key Realist insights. But this Article shows that Du Bois wasn't simply another Legal Realist. He was an outstanding one, whose own Realism emerged not through colorblind critiques of classical legal thought, but through thinking, organizing, and propagandizing against race hierarchy. This Article traces how Du Bois's insights matured over the course of his career, including by examining works that receive little attention today, especially among legal scholars. From Du Bois's dissertation on the slave trade, to his studies of the South's political economy, to his collection of essays in Darkwater, where he developed an idea of whiteness as property. This long pattern of thought congealed most powerfully in the "dictatorship of property," an idea Du Bois developed in his famous Black Reconstruction. This memorable phrase and concept merged public and private, political and economic, and the traditionally separate domains of property and sovereignty. His profound legal-theoretical insights came through studying slavery and sharecropping; through responding to Lynch Law and race riots; through reacting to cases like Bailey v. Alabama, rather than Lochner v. New York; through historiographical battle with the Dunning School; and even through factional fights within the NAACP. After World War II, Du Bois would also…

Table of contents and opening paragraph of paper

🧵: my latest draft paper ‘The Legal Realism of W.E.B. Du Bois’ is still looking for a law review home 🤞🏽

Here are some brief highlights for anyone interested

I'm excited to be chairing the American Society for Legal History Projects and Proposals Committee this cycle. We look forward to receiving funding applications for conferences, museum exhibits, pedagogical experiments, and more! We are accepting submissions until Sept. 1.

aslh.net/award/projec...

Abstract: This article reviews cultural sociological approaches to law and considers how they may sharpen analysis of social crises. As the United States faces myriad law-related crises, such as rising authoritarianism, regulatory capture, and police violence, the cultural study of law has become an urgent endeavor. Culture constitutes and shapes law, especially in unsettled times. Five concepts have dominated the cultural study of law: rules, norms, frames, cultural capital, and legal consciousness. Future research would benefit from more precise considerations of how rules and norms operate in unsettled times. One way forward is specifying how frames, cultural capital, and legal consciousness shape and are shaped by changing rules and norms. Moreover, future research could leverage each concept to sharpen understandings of social control, inequality, and regulatory compliance in understudied contexts, along understudied axes of stratification, and with respect to the infusion of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, into the law.

A revised version of this paper is forthcoming in Annual Review of Law and Social Science. The article shows how culture constitutes and shapes law and social crisis. The best thing about writing this was the chance to read brilliant work on law, culture, and unsettled times

osf.io/preprints/so...

THIS. I get an email like this every few weeks. They are selling hard to academic to offload the work to make space for other "more important" work.
But analysis & writing IS the work that honors the voices of intellectual ancestors, centers the participants & connects the two to to build theory

Apply – The Nation Fund for Independent Journalism Apply now for our journalism internship program.

Applications for the summer/fall 2026 session of @thenation.com internship are now open!
🔴 $20/hr, 35 hrs/week
🔴 6 months long, starting June 22
🔴 application deadline April 19
thenationfund.org/apply/

Franklin Research Center Announces the Opening of the Sylvia Wynter Papers, Exhibition, and Symposium - The Devil's Tale Post contributed by John B. Gartrell, director John Hope Franklin Research Center  The John Hope Franklin Research Center is pleased to share that the archive of philosopher, scholar, and author Sylvi...

"The John Hope Franklin Research Center is pleased to share that the archive of philosopher, scholar, and author Sylvia Wynter will be opened to the public beginning March 3." Alt text: photograph of Sylvia Wynter.

Justice after trauma? Race, red tape keep sexual assault victims from compensation Bureaucratic hurdles and racial disparities restrict access to victim compensation for adult survivors of sexual assault, deepen justice system inequities and compound trauma.

Justice after trauma? Race, red tape keep sexual assault victims from compensation

Now on First View: The latest MAH Q&A on how the national crisis in higher ed affects historians of the modern United States. Lauren Jae Gutterman speaks to Julio Capó, Jr., Joan E. Cashin, Alex Lichtenstein, and Melanie Newport.

Read the full Q&A here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Our February #LSAMemberSpotlight is Board Trustee @asadasad.bsky.social, @stanfordsoc.bsky.social Asst Professor and author of Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life. (@princetonupress.bsky.social)

Learn more about Prof Asad here! bit.ly/LSAAsad

Senator Chuck Schumer conducts a news conference in the U.S. Capitol in May 2025. Image: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images FORUM How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism Moderation used to help Democrats win, but its advantages now have been greatly exaggerated. Adam Bonica, Jake Grumbach With responses from → Cori Bush, Amanda Litman, Matthew Yglesias, G. Elliott Morris, Julia Serano, Eric Rauchway, Suzanne Mettler & Trevor E. Brown, Thomas Ferguson, Timothy Shenk, Jared Abbott & Milan Loewer, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, Lily Geismer, Danielle Wiggins, William A. Galston, and Henry Burke

We have a Boston Review Forum out today on the Democratic Party in a time of authoritarianism

www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

About 30 or so Stanford students and faculty eating lunch. A slideshow of books published in the Stanford Sociology Department are displayed on a screen in the background

Prof. Michelle Jackson and Prof. Gi-Wook Shin hold up cupcakes with images of their book covers on top of the icing. Physical copies of their books are in the foreground. A slideshow of other recently published books in the Stanford Sociology Department are in the background

At this week's community lunch, we celebrated faculty books published in the last 5 years, covering a range of social issues from immigration and criminal justice to the division of labor in society and economic development in the Asia-Pacific region.

Front cover of The Division of Rationalized Labor. The cover includes four pictures: pen and paper, microscope, factory tower, police badge. Modern-looking yellow lines and graphs are superimposed.

My new book, The Division of Rationalized Labor, is now shipping! A brief summary of the argument to follow…

Minneapolis Knows How to Resist This Violence From George Floyd to Renee Good, the city has become all too familiar with fatal violence by law enforcement—and it knows exactly how to respond.

I tried to turn my rage yesterday into something that brings us some light. For @newrepublic.com, I wrote about how 2020 prepared Minneapolis for the current crisis of Trump's DHS. newrepublic.com/article/2050...