Others have identified client differences as the primary structuring factor in the legal profession. Because of highly differentiated client groups, it is argued, the bar has become fragmented into a multiplicity of professions. Such a conclusion is based on research limited to metropolitan settings. Data from practitioners in rural Missouri and in a middle-sized Missouri city show that community context has a prior structuring influence. Community context appears to affect the probability of entrepreneurial practice, the variations in meaning associated with such practice, client mix and subsequent lawyer self-understanding, work characteristics, and extent of involvement in civic affairs. Further evidence suggests that the legal profession is indeed an “overdetermined social system” with roots that are set deeply in the primary economic and social structures of the setting in which it practices. The bar mirrors in its practice the issues typical of that setting and reflects in its social structure the degree of complexity found in the community. Community context appears therefore to be an additional force fragmenting the legal profession.

Despite the widespread perception that lawyers exercise considerable influence over national policy making in the United States, their participation in the process has previously received little systematic empirical analysis. Based on a variety of evidence gathered in interviews with more than eight hundred Washington representatives, including data on their work, careers, contacts with government agencies, networks of acquaintance, and relationships with clients, we argue that lawyers are not as prevalent, active, or influential in national policy making as the popular image suggests. Rather, the findings indicate that lawyers occupy a relatively specialized niche in the system of interest representation, one that allows them to command substantial economic rewards and to maintain a measure of independence and autonomy in their work, but that limits their influence in policy formation.

In this paper we argue that differences in the conceptualization of individual actors in networks provide the most parsimonious explanation for differences that occur between American and Japanese views of sanctions and between actors in different role relationships within each society. Our empirical tests drew on respondents' hypothetical punishment choices and punishment rationales in surveys of Detroit, Michigan, and Yokohama and Kanazawa, Japan. As predicted, American views of punishments for everyday misdeeds were more likely to favor isolation or retribution and American rationales for imprisonment were significantly more retributive than in Japan. Within each culture, offenses between intimates were least likely to evoke isolative or retributive punishments whereas offenses between strangers were most likely to do so. We conclude by considering alternatives to our structuralist explanation of these findings and by suggesting some implications of legal culture for dispute resolution in the United States versus Japan.

Largely as a result of the feminist movement, most states have passed some form of rape reform legislation. Most rape law research has attempted to ascertain whether the reformed laws have achieved specific instrumental goals. In contrast, this paper emphasizes rape law reform as a symbolic indicator of women's contemporary social status. We believe there is a need for a greater appreciation of the diversity of rape law reform across the country and of the coexistence of traditional and feminist elements in contemporary law. Through a comprehensive empirical assessment of state rape statutes, we identify the different dimensions of rape legislation and provide insight into the degree to which feminist conceptualizations of rape have achieved social legitimacy.

We present a detailed case study of administrative responses to litigated reform efforts directed at the Texas Department of Corrections over a two-decade period. We found that administrators attempted to maintain their organizational boundaries by: (1) controlling information; (2) using political connections in the broader community; (3) launching a judicial counterattack; and (4) exercising administrative prerogatives. Defiance of demands from the broader legal community was related to: (1) the organizational culture of the Texas prison system, which developed and existed in isolation not only from the federal courts but also from oversight by state officials; (2) pronouncements by the prison system's leadership that created a moral climate in which court-ordered reform could be readily defined by prison staff as illegitimate; and (3) ineffective control structures within the system that failed to respond to violations of the law by prison staff. Keeping the limitations of a single case study in mind, we close with a set of observations for addressing court-ordered organizational reform in a comparative framework.

The Petition Clause of the First Amendment protects any peaceful, legal attempt to promote or discourage governmental action at all governmental levels and all governmental branches. This paper describes our examination of SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) cases where citizens who contact the government are sued by the interests they oppose. We present the findings of a legal document analysis and summarize ongoing research to understand the social dynamic processes and extralegal outcomes of SLAPPs. The purposeful blend of qualitative and quantitative methods is highlighted as an appropriate approach for answering micro- and macrosociological questions involved in these cross-institutional disputes.