To an unprecedented degree American society at the turn of the twentieth century is governed through crime. Nearly three percent of adults are in the custody of the correctional system. Crime and fear of crime enter into a large part of the fundamental decisions in life: where to live, how to raise your family, where to locate your business, where and when to shop, and so on. The crime victim has become the veritable outline of a new form of political subjectivity. This essay explores the complex entanglements of democracy and governing through crime. The effort to build democratic governance after the American Revolution was carried out in part through the problem of crime and punishment. Today, however, the enormous expansion of governing through crime endangers the effort to reinvent democracy for the twenty-first century.

There are 5 African Americans among the 433 students in The University of Texas School of Law's class of 2000. There are 7 in the class of 2001, and 7 in the class of 2002. With 1,387 students, the UT School of Law is big. The 19 African American students comprise 1.4% of the total.

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.

This article addresses the question of women's seeming rejection of sexual harassment law by refusing to apply the label “sexual harassment” in the face of incidents that would easily qualify as such. Building on the work of Bumiller (1988) and the tradition of sociolegal studies focusing on understanding the power of the law in its everyday context (e.g., Merry 1979; Engel 1987; Sarat and Kearns 1993), this analysis explores the “tactical milieu” in which both hostile work environment sexual harassment and tactics for its resistance are produced. Using in-depth interviews with both women and men, the author explores the ways a particular form of hostile work environment harassment–dubbed “chain yanking”–poaches on the realm of ambiguous humor to effect male group solidarity and women's disempowerment. A common countertactic–”not taking it personal”– is analyzed for its simultaneous power as resistance and unwitting collaboration. The contradictory effects of this tactic-countertactic pairing on the naming and claiming of the harm of sexual harassment are examined, as well as the implications this has for combating sexual harassment in the workplace.

Legalizing Gender Inequality results from a decade of research in which Robert Nelson, a sociologist of law, combined forces with William Bridges, a sociologist who has studied labor markets. This combination led to an unusual and creative approach. The authors chose four class-action court cases involving sex discrimination in pay, and did in-depth studies of the judicial decisions, testimony, exhibits, and depositions from each. They also obtained and reanalyzed statistical data sets involved in the cases and, where possible, interviewed key actors.

Lempert, Chambers, and Adams's superb new study of the careers of minority and white graduates of the University of Michigan Law School will come as welcome news to those who value diversity on this nation's college and professional school campuses. Alongside the Bowen-Box study (1998), to which the authors link their work, the Michigan data provide powerful evidence of the many benefits of affirmative action for both minority and majority students, as well as for a constituency that is often overlooked in the debate over affirmative action—namely, the people these aspiring professionals are intended to serve. More important, the authors' careful analysis reveals what many have long suspected. LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs “seem to have no relationship to success after law school, whether success is measured by earned income, career satisfaction, or service contributions” (Lempert, Chambers, and Adams 2000, 401).

This paper examines prospects for transnational advocacy and regimes as a way to buttress national labor laws and institutions in an interlocking mosaic and thus ensure the continuation of strong systems of industrial relations under conditions of increasing economic integration. We argue that there is a role for transnational solutions as a supplement to national systems, and we assess the conditions necessary to make this approach effective. We look at a variety of possible actors and arenas that could foster transnationalism and provide illustrations of transnational advocacy and regime building. We conclude that elements of a multilevel, public-private transnational regime are present in some parts of the world and that these elements can occasionally be knit together. We find that prospects for an effective and sustainable system of transnational multi-level regulation are greater when regional integration pacts such as the EU and NAFTA create transnational norms or forums. But, based on preliminary analysis of transnational advocacy and regulation in these two areas, we also conclude that no fully effective system has yet emerged.

In the field of legal education research, everyone talks about the importance of examining long-term outcomes, but nobody has done much about it-until now. ‘Michigan's Minority Graduates in Practice’ (Lempert, Chambers, and Adams 2000) is pioneering work, providing the most comprehensive look anyone has yet undertaken at the long-term experiences, achievements, and attitudes of specific law school cohorts. Moreover, it is work done at the highest social science standards-a standard not met often enough in this field. The care and professionalism of Richard Lempert, David Chambers, and Terry Adams will rightly give their findings enormous credibility.

Lempert, Chambers, and Adams's study of the careers of three generations of students of color admitted to the University of Michigan Law School fills several important gaps in our knowledge about the consequences and implications of affirmative action protocols in law school admission. First, it provides empirical data for the argument that conventional test-based admission policies both mask and support deep flaws in the way we allocate opportunity and privilege.