This paper advances a comparative conflict theory of racial and ethnic similarities and differences in youth perceptions of criminal injustice. We use HLM models to test six conflict hypotheses with data from more than 18,000 Chicago public school students. At the micro-level African American youth are more vulnerable to police contacts than are Latinos, who are more at risk than whites, and there is a corresponding gradient in minority group perceptions of injustice. When structural sources of variation in adolescents' experiences are taken into account, however, minority youth perceptions of criminal injustice appear more similar to one another, while remaining distinct from those of white youth. At the micro-level, Latino youth respond more strongly and negatively to police contacts, even though they experience fewer of them. At the macrolevel, as white students in schools increase cross-sectionally, perceptions of injustice among both African American and Latino youth at first intensify and then ultimately abate. Although there are again signs of a gradient, African American and Latino responses to school integration also are as notable in their similarities as in their differences. Reduced police contacts and meaningful school integration are promising mechanisms for diminishing both adolescent African American and Latino perceptions of criminal injustice.

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Many districts are considering revamping the systems determining which schools students attend. These discussions are, inherently, about the fate of the neighborhood school. But this term has never been well defined. We develop a three-dimensional, theoretically, and empirically grounded definition of a neighborhood school. The authors'two case studies demonstrate that these dimensions are independent and differentially related to academic achievement. The results suggest that youth in the authors' samples have higher academic performance when they attend school with both the majority of youth in their neighborhoods and with students from other neighborhoods. Therefore, districts interested in promoting achievement gains and promoting within-school diversity may consider a policy in which all the youth from a number of neighborhoods are placed in a single school.

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Lempert, Chambers, and Adams (2000; hereafter LCA) make an important contribution to both the debate on affirmative action in legal education and the sociology of the legal profession. We find their empirical results credible and agree with their interpretations of the data related to arguments about the role of affirmative action in Michigan's admissions policies. Yet, in crafting an analysis to demonstrate the similarities in the career outcomes of minority and white graduates, they have minimized evidence that points to substantial continuing patterns of inequality by race and gender within the legal profession. Moreover, LCA only begin to illuminate the mechanisms that produce the career patterns they document. Of particular importance is the question of how race, class, and gender interact to shape lawyers' careers-a topic LCA largely reserve for future analyses.