This essay explores the theme of the 1998 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association: “Making Connections across Disciplines, Theories, and Methods,” focusing in particular on the connections between researcher and subject and between researcher and researcher. The essay discusses three recent articles, by Joseph Sanders and V. Lee Hamilton, by Barbara Yngvesson, and by Margaret Montoya. These articles illustrate recent creative efforts by law and society researchers to forge new kinds of connections to their subjects. The articles also illustrate fundamentally different conceptions of the role of the researcher and of the methodologies on which sociolegal studies might be based. These differing conceptions are considered as part of a more general argument that epistemological contradictions are an essential part of our efforts to apprehend the world we seek to describe. They connect law and society researchers to one another and ensure the vitality of our field.

This essay argues that the history of the American welfare state is inextricably bound up with disaster relief. It focuses on the New Deal, which was justified using numerous precedents drawn from the previous 150 years of federal disaster relief. After sketching this early history, including the development of a compelling moral narrative of fault and blame, I examine congressional speeches, briefs filed in the central legal cases of the New Deal by the Roosevelt administration and its opponents, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, and photographs taken by New Deal employees to trace how the Depression was narrated as a “disaster” whose victims were entitled to federal relief.

In recent years, the legal profession has undergone significant organizational restructuring with the dramatic growth of firms and a rapid increase in the number of female lawyers. We argue that big firms actively recruited female lawyers during a period when women were needed to fill roles of cultivating and serving increasing numbers of institutional or corporate clients. Yet despite women's contribution of legal talent to the development of clientele, a glass ceiling has restricted their opportunities to advance in law firm hierarchies. We examine two approaches to gender inequities in law firm hierarchy: disparity as economic efficiency and disparity as structural discrimination. Both approaches neglect aspects of social relations within law firms as well as social resources lawyers bring to their work. We therefore introduce a social capital perspective to unpack how human capital is enhanced and how exclusionary practices are reinforced in law firms. Using a longitudinal study of male and female lawyers conducted from 1990 to 1996, we specify several different forms of social capital. The findings from our study reveal that female lawyers participate fully in the accumulation of social capital in law firms, through service to valued institutional clientele and high billings, yet their efforts result in reduced probabilities of partnership.

Many studies suggest that courts fail to protect individual rights since they support and uphold state repressive practices during periods of emergency or confrontation. Previous studies focused on judicial policies as reflected injudicial declarations and decisions that were fully disposed by judges and officially published. I argue that the study of out-of-court settlements and the comparison between the outcomes of settlements and the judicial rhetoric are key to understanding the behavior of courts in times of national crisis. At such times, courts may hesitate to openly confront the government on the issue of minority rights, but they may strive to protect minorities by exerting pressure on the governmental legal apparatus and by effecting out-of-court settlements more favorable to minorities than official decisions. Thus, courts influence social practices while avoiding government or public opinion counterreactions that would impair their institutional autonomy. This argument is demonstrated in a case study of the Israeli High Court of Justice during the Palestinian Intifada.

In the spring of 1998, the University of Wisconsin Law School sponsored a multidisciplinary conference to assess the impact of perhaps the most visible, widely cited, and influential article ever published in the law and society field: Marc Galanter's (1974) “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change.” In that article Galanter attempts to explain the outcome of trial court litigation in essentially structural terms. He discusses “the way in which the basic architecture of the legal system creates and limits the possibilities of using the system for redistributive change.” Galanter divides parties into “one shotters” and “repeat players.” A one shotter is a person, business, or organizational entity that deals with the legal system infrequently. The one shotter's claims are too large (relative to their size) or too small (relative to the cost of remedies) to be managed routinely and rationally, but a one shotter's interest in winning a particular case is very high.

Our analysis addresses whether the legal profession can be classified as experiencing successful feminization. Drawing on the work of Reskin and Roos (1990) and Wright and Jacobs (1994), we suggest that relatively successful feminization occurs where (1) occupational growth is rapid, (2) graduate and specialized degrees are important, and (3) wages are increasing. We develop an argument for the legal profession as a case of successful feminization with data taken from the U.S. census 1970-1990 and from a cohort of lawyers surveyed in 1984 and 1990 as part of the National Survey of Lawyers' Career Satisfaction (Hirsch 1992). Our results suggest that the legal profession was on the road to achieving successful gender integration and feminization during the 1980s. Overall improvements in the economic standing of female attorneys compared with males is occurring among women at or below the median in the earnings distribution and among elite lawyers at the top of the earnings distribution. There is also evidence of a persistent “glass ceiling” in the earnings distribution for women. Analyses of change in evaluations of legal work settings suggest that changes in earnings that favor women's successful entry into law are occurring in a context of growing dissatisfaction with legal work settings. We discuss the implications of our findings for further analyses of the gender integration of male-dominated occupations.

To understand the varying impact of law, we must compare the effects of legal institutions with the effects of rival institutions and the impact one law with the impact of another. We must also ask how the setting in which institutions compete and laws are implemented—very often an organization—shapes outcomes. Using the competition between legal, medical, and familial institutions in infant intensive care units as an example, this article elaborates a theory of institutional competition and therefore of the influence of law in organizations. I show that institutions, including legal institutions, gain influence by working through internal organizational processes. Thus, the impact of law on medical decisionmaking varies with whether legal actors have learned how to be present when decisions are to be made, make legal issues into organizational problems, introduce choice points that require action, and alter the possibility space of eligible solutions. Using variations among the major categories of laws that govern the practice of infant intensive care, the article also shows how organizational and institutional theories help explain why some laws have more impact than others.

This investigation examines the success of various types of litigants appearing before the U.S. Courts of Appeals from 1925 to 1988. The analysis parallels the earlier studies by Songer and Sheehan (1992) and Wheeler et al. (1987) that applied the core concepts introduced by Galanter's groundbreaking analysis of why the “haves” come out ahead to study litigant success on the U.S. Courts of Appeals and state courts of last resort. The findings suggest that repeat player litigants with substantial organizational strength (“haves”) are much more likely to win in the federal courts of appeals than one-shot litigants with fewer resources. The “haves” win more frequently in published decisions, even after controls are introduced for the ideological makeup of the panel. The advantage in appellate litigation enjoyed by repeat player “haves” is remarkably consistent over time. In particular, the U.S. government has compiled an impressive record in these courts by dominating opposing litigants over the 64-year period of analysis.

The past 15 years have seen a significant attempt by governments in the United Kingdom to restructure the market for legal services. As a part of this program, in 1992 the English bar finally lost its exclusive jurisdiction over advocacy. Although solicitors could qualify to appear as advocates in the higher courts, few have so done. We explore the perceptions of legal professionals, solicitors, and barristers through a qualitative study. By examining the legal profession as a set of connected but differentiated and competing fields of practice, we show how change resonates with the legal market. We find that institutional coherence and client service vie with the desire to become complete lawyers in the rationale for solicitor advocacy. The identification of institutional constraints on the pursuit of professional hegemony leads us to qualify the proposition that professionals are motivated purely by economic returns or market dominance.

Attending to an underdeveloped lacuna in Weber's sociology of law, this essay examines the relationship between Protestant theology and the emergence of modern, rational legal systems. The essay argues that radical Protestantism inspired demands for the rationalization of English law, and while not successful in bringing about the concrete changes advocated, that central features of Weber's notion of rational legal thought were also central in the theology of the radical Protestants. Examining the legal thought of two groups that appeared during the English Revolution—the Levellers and the Diggers—the essay shows how theology provided these groups with a model for a more predictable law, offered them a source for the norms of their proposed legal system, and motivated the desire for law reform.

Resource mobilization and gender socialization theories go a long way toward explaining why so many sexually harassed women opt not to report their problems, but they shed little light on why some still choose to take action and sue. This article examines how relationality can affect a sexually harassed woman's decision to sue. An analysis of 31 litigation narratives shows that regardless of the severity of the harassment, or the amount of legal aid available, maternal responsibilities, marital commitments and parental approval can become pivotal considerations. Some considered the integrity of familial ties to be priceless assets worth suing for. Others deemed them too valuable to risk losing in a contest over rights. These narratives confirm feminist assertions that relationships—especially familial ones—often play a central role in the choices that women make. They also challenge popular assumptions about what constitutes a “personal choice” and under what circumstances women are likely to chose to litigate.

Drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the dialogic, this essay explores the production of legal meanings about criminal responsibility in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In particular, it examines the honor-based defense of the “unwritten law” as it was articulated in relation to the formal law of provocation in the 19th century, and in the 1906 trial of Harry K. Thaw for the murder of Stanford White. Meanings about criminal responsibility emerge, I argue, from a process of discursive conflict and negotiation between the domains of legal consciousness and formal law. At trial, competing narratives of indictment and exoneration literally enact that dynamic process, so that trials may be said to be the materialization of the dialogic production of “law” in its broadest sense.

We examine whether Galanter's repeat player (RP) concept helps in deciphering the law-related behavior of Russian enterprises. We adapt the RP concept to the Russian context defining the Russian repeat player (RRP). Using data from 328 enterprises, we examine whether RRP-ness explains the use of protokols of disagreement, petitioning to freeze assets, contractual prepayment, and litigation activity. RRPs are very different from Galanter's RPs, generally exhibiting less aggression and innovativeness, but suing other RRPs frequently. Examination of factors other than RRP-ness suggests the presence of lawyers is important in determining law-related activity, a result not necessarily expected in Russia.

Large law firms are increasingly moving away from the “up or out” organizational model by employing lawyers on a permanent basis under a variety of titles, a trend with important consequences for the structure of lawyers' career opportunities. Some firms, however, have moved farther in this direction than others. Using data from a nationwide sample of law firm establishments, this study investigates factors that lead firms to implement permanent employment arrangements. The results show that firms that are more exposed to new features of the changing legal environment make greater use of permanent employees. Permanent employment arrangements are more common in law firms where work is more complex, ties to clients are weaker, and lawyers place less emphasis on collegiality. Effects are stronger for lawyers with nontraditional titles such as “senior attorney” and “senior counsel” than for permanent associates, suggesting that firms employ two distinct categories of permanent non-partner lawyers.

Media coverage of litigation may affect perceptions and thereby behavior of litigants, judges, juries, legislators and business decisionmakers. Their behavior influences various legal, social, political and economic outcomes. For product liability verdicts during 1983 to 1996 involving automobile manufacturers, we examine the amount of coverage in several dozen newspapers. We find almost no articles reporting on any of 259 verdicts for the defendant. Econometric analysis focuses on determinants of the amount of coverage of 92 verdicts for plaintiffs, 16 of which include punitive damages. Key determinants include the award amount, the nature of injuries, the vehicle's recall history, and especially the existence of a punitive component of damages regardless of its size.