Rights in the Shadow of Class: Poverty, Welfare, and the Law

“Legality with a Vengeance”: Reclaiming Distribution for Sociolegal Studies

“…Finally, foundations—namely, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Walter E. Meyer Research Institute of Law, the Social Science Research Council, and the Ford Foundation—invested in projects and scholarly communities to bring sociological expertise to law, and to bring social science‐informed law to the activist state (Garth and Sterling ; Trubek ). Sociolegal scholars also participated in reform movements and social welfare policy expansions, from the civil rights movement to the War on Poverty, from the rights expansion of the Warren Court (Bussiere ; Davis ; Nadasen ) to the creation of the Office of Economic Opportunity legal services and the Mobilization for Youth (Munger ).…”

“…The legal academy once again focused on legal doctrine rather than substantive social welfare outcomes. The conservative backlash against civil and poverty rights made progressive poverty scholarship unwelcome among policy makers and discouraged new research projects (Munger ). Focused back on the legal system, sociolegal studies turned its attention to appellate and trial courts, juries, the handling of scientific evidence and expert witnesses, punitive damages, and on the legal profession.…”

“…Scholars continue to call for policy‐relevant sociolegal research (Calavita ; Handler ; Lempert ; Merry ; Munger ; Sarat and Silbey ; Seron ). And there are important exceptions to the rule that sociolegal scholars rarely study distributive laws (e.g., Friedman ; Gustafson ; Haglund and Stryker ; Harris ; Hartog ; Munger , ; Sterett ). But since the 1960s, the field of law and society as a whole has pivoted away from the study of law and economic distribution.…”

“…“While we thought we were producing a new understanding of law,” Susan Silbey and Austin Sarat reflected in 1987, “the bite was never all that critical because we never tried to undo liberal claims about the relationship between law and society” (: 171). Thus, on the topic of poverty, law and society scholars have studied the way in which the legal capacities and experiences of law differ between the poor and the nonpoor (e.g., Carlin et al ; Gilliom ; Levine and Preston ; Sarat ), but few sociolegal scholars have explored the law's role in the persistence of poverty (Munger ), or the responsibility of law in creating cultural categories of “deservingness” with regard to state provision (Best ; Steensland ). Few sociolegal scholars have asked why the United States has a comparatively hidden welfare state (Gordon ; Handler ; Handler and Hasenfeld ; Katz ; Levitsky ) and no national health insurance (Quadagno ).…”

The Two Faces of Law and Inequality: From Critique to the Promise of Situated, Pragmatic Policy

“…For the last several years, scholars across the social sciences have documented a disturbing trend of growing economic inequality both within the United States and beyond (Munger ). The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world leader, but is by no means alone (McCall and Percheski ).…”