The analyses of the death penalty reported in these pages, while diverse in both subject and method, are part of a distinctive post–McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) generation of studies in which the social science literature on capital punishment has begun to stand separate from ever present constitutional litigation on death penalty issues. This independence of scholarship from litigation has come as a consequence of rejection: A majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has forcefully rebuffed the attempts of social scientists to influence the constitutional law of capital punishment.

In contrast to a recent survey conducted by Miller and Simpson, two earlier surveys of adults, one conducted in 1972 and the other in 1982, reported that women scored higher than men on measures of what Grasmick and Bursik recently have called perceived threats of shame and embarrassment, as well as legal sanctions, for violating the law. Hagan's power-control theory, coupled with trends in labor force and household composition, is used to predict a decline over time in the magnitude of the effect of sex on perceived threats of sanctions. The 1982 survey is merged with an identical one conducted in 1992 to determine whether men and women have become more alike in their perception of these threats. Evidence supporting the predictions from power-control theory is found for theft but not for assault. The findings are discussed in the context of various theories and previous research concerning gender, crime, and social control.

In explaining crime, some criminological theories emphasize time-stable individual differences in propensity to offend while others emphasize more proximate and situational factors. Using scenario data from a sample of college undergraduates we have found evidence to support both positions. A measure of criminal propensity (poor self-control) was found to be significantly related to self-reported decisions to commit three offenses (drunk driving, theft, and sexual assault). Even after considering differences in self-control, there was evidence to suggest that the attractiveness of the crime target, the ease of committing the crime with minimum risk, and perceptions of the costs and benefits of committing the crime were all significantly related to offending decisions. Our results suggest that theories of criminal offending should include notions pertaining to persistent individual differences in criminal propensity and choice-relevant variables.

The social disorganization model of crime and delinquency generally has argued that the socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods is related to rates of illegal behavior only to the extent that it increases the likelihood of residential turnover and racial/ethnic heterogeneity. Such an orientation reflects the traditional assumption of human ecology that urban areas are characterized by continual processes of residential upgrading as groups become progressively assimilated into the economic structure of the community and have more economic resources at their disposal. However, the validity of the indirect effect hypothesis may have become questionable in the many cities that have experienced a significant economic decline during the last few decades, thereby leading to the creation of an immobile underclass population. We examine here the relative validity of the indirect effect hypothesis in Chicago's neighborhoods during 1960 and 1980. While the findings generally support the traditional indirect effect assumption of social disorganization, they also emphasize the need to consider the economic and political contexts in which these communities are embedded.

Focusing on the independent and powerful pre–martial law Philippine Supreme Court, we investigate the impact of the establishment and breakdown of authoritarianism on the court's performance of the functions of conflict resolution, social control, and administration. We develop hypotheses concerning and models of the impacts of the onset, consolidation, and breakdown of martial law authoritarianism under Ferdinand Marcos on that court's handling of the three functions. Using Box-Jenkins time series analysis methods, we assess the impacts of the onset, consolidation, and breakdown of Marcos's authoritarianism on the Supreme Court's functional performance. In our analysis, authoritarianism had no impact on the Court's performance of the conflict resolution function; authoritarianism's onset increased and its breakdown decreased the Court's performance of the routine administrative function; and authoritarianism's onset decreased but its consolidation increased the Court's performance of the social control function.

Many employers create internal procedures for the resolution of discrimination complaints. We examine internal complaint handlers' conceptions of civil rights law and the implications of those conceptions for their approach to dispute resolution. Drawing on interview data, we find that complaint handlers tend to subsume legal rights under managerial interests. They construct civil rights law as a diffuse standard of fairness, consistent with general norms of good management. Although they seek to resolve complaints to restore smooth employment relations, they tend to recast discrimination claims as typical managerial problems. While the assimilation of law into the management realm may extend the reach of law, it may also undermine legal rights by deemphasizing and depoliticizing workplace discrimination.

How are violence and pain put into legal discourse? How does law distinguish its violence—capital punishment—from other kinds of violence? Do the strategies used to differentiate legal and extralegal violence alleviate anxiety about law and the uses to which law's violence is put? This article addresses these questions through an analysis of a capital trial in which an African-American man is being retried for the murder of a young white woman. It examines the social and cultural resources used to speak about violence and to differentiate legal and extralegal violence, and it suggests that the juxtaposition of narratives about violence in capital trials arouses rather than alleviates anxiety.

This study examines the development of organizational probation. That this sanction emerged from the long process of developing organizational sentencing guidelines as a clearly specified, widely available, and often binding sanction represents an unexpected statutory outcome: an interventionist, nonmarket sanction during a time of deregulatory free market policy and ideology. This outcome is explained through a multi-theoretical framework emphasizing the structural capacity of the primary lawmaking agency, the United States Sentencing Commission, the role of middle-level state workers, and the bounded rationality of strategic decisions made by business strategists and lobbyists.

In 1983, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were modified to mandate sanctions against attorneys who filed frivolous pleadings or motions or who failed to make reasonable efforts to verify facts or statements of law made in pleadings or motions. There is substantial variation among federal judicial districts in the use of this Rule 11 provision. To what degree can these variations be explained by situational or legal factors? Does one need to use a concept such as local legal culture to account for at least some of the variation? These are the questions addressed by this article. We find that variations in most Rule 11-related activities can be explained by structural and situational factors. We conclude that beyond the expectations created by specific structural and legal factors, one does not need to resort to local legal culture to explain Rule 11-related phenomena. We suggest that the conditions that make local legal culture a useful construct in the context of the criminal courts may not apply in the civil justice system.

This article develops a macrolevel framework on inequality and juvenile court processing by integrating ideas drawn from conflict theory, research on urban poverty, and recent race-specific trends in drug enforcement. Using 1985 data for more than 200 U.S. counties, we examine how structural context—especially racial inequality and the concentration of “underclass” poverty—influence the formal petitioning, predisposition detention, and out-of-home placement of juveniles. The data are generally consistent with the hypothesis that underclass blacks are viewed as a threatening group to middle-class populations and are thus subjected to increased control by the juvenile justice system. We discuss the implications of our results for a better understanding of the relationship between larger societal forces of increasing poverty and racial inequality and local systems of formal social control.

Sociolegal research focused on equal protection and the death penalty faces an impasse as the result of recent Supreme Court decisions limiting the admissability of social science research in general and of aggregate data on bias in the application of capital punishment in particular. This impasse, however, provides an opportunity to renew investigation and analysis of the deeper meaning and implications of the death penalty in contemporary societies, not in abandonment of but as a complement to equal protection–oriented research.