Law & Policy最新文献

{"title":"Reproducing crises: Understanding the role of law in the COVID-19 global pandemic","authors":"Jose Atiles,&nbsp;David Whyte","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12214","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Governmental responses to the COVID-19 global pandemic have generated numerous constitutionals, policy, legal, and political-economic debates. Scholarly engagements with the sociolegal and policy consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have been dominated by discussion on the role of emergency powers, the suspension of individual civil liberties, the suspension of economic rules in order to guarantee economic survival, and social regulation of public spaces and of workplaces. This paper aims to explore how a critical sociolegal scholarship can contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the role of law in creating the unequal conditions that propitiated the COVID-19 pandemic and that might enable further crises. This introduction offers a roadmap for theorizing the limits of law, the operationalization of emergency powers and the different policies implemented by global south and north countries in response to the pandemic. This introduction is structured as follow: (1) provides a general overview of the law and society tradition and its engagement with the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) engages with three key consequences of the pandemic, labor, and the lockdown; colonial implications; and the limits of law; (3) introduces the papers in this special issue; (4) sketches a proposal for the critical sociolegal scholarship of law and crises.</p>","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 3","pages":"238-252"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/lapo.12214","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50140827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Under the quasi-judicial state: H-1B employment rights in an era of judicial retrenchment","authors":"Gabrielle Clark","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12213","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Foreign workers holding H-1B visas gained recourse to federal employment rights under the Immigration &amp; Nationality Act (INA) for the very first time when Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990 (IMMACT90). This paper examines H-1B employment rights enforcement under the INA as it has intersected with broader features of the American legal system: what political scientists call judicial retrenchment and the quasi-judicial state. I first show how H-1B rights, already limited by the domestic politics that shaped the IMMACT, became subject to judicial retrenchment when the federal courts confined H-1B disputes under the INA to the quasi-judicial state at the Department of Labor (DOL). I then use published data on DOL investigation outcomes, published and unpublished administrative case records, and judicial cases reviewing agency action to examine the extent to which and how H-1B workers can use the quasi-judicial state to solve workplace problems. My empirical findings contribute to a new understanding of the relationship between rights retrenchment, the judiciary, and the rise of alternatives to court in immigration and employment law and point to possible fine-grained changes for future immigration reform.</p>","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 1","pages":"81-106"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/lapo.12213","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50135606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A “lifeline out of the COVID-19 crisis”? An ecofeminist critique of the European Green Deal","authors":"Stefanie Khoury","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12211","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;In early 2020, the world was rocked by a highly contagious, acute respiratory virus. Within a few months, many countries had gone into lockdown and were issuing mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing in what came to be known as the COVID-19 pandemic.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Many theories quickly developed as to how and where COVID-19 emerged, although the definitive answer is still not available. Scientists do agree, however, that it is a zoonotic virus—meaning it is an infectious diseases transferred from animals to humans or vice-versa—and that the Wuhan market in China was a major, initial spreading location (Maxmen, &lt;span&gt;2022&lt;/span&gt;; Pigenet, &lt;span&gt;2020&lt;/span&gt;; WHO, &lt;span&gt;2021b&lt;/span&gt;). For some time now, the scientific community has been warning of the potential for increases in zoonotic diseases with the intensification of climate change and the rise of global warming as by-products of anthropogenic activities that have pushed animals and humans into closer contact (see, e.g., Schrag &amp; Weiner, &lt;span&gt;1995&lt;/span&gt;). A joint-report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (, &lt;span&gt;2020&lt;/span&gt;, p. 11) recently recalled that, “While pandemics such as [COVID-19] are sometimes seen as a ‘black swan’—an extremely rare event—they are actually a widely predicted consequence of how people source food, trade animals, and alter environments.” That report warns that, “the rising trend in zoonotic diseases is driven by the degradation of our natural environment” and results from anthropogenic activities, including agricultural intensification and conversion of land, wildlife exploitation, resource extraction, increased demand for animal protein and climate change. Despite the world being taken by surprise in early 2020, COVID-19 was in fact a foreseeable event.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Europe, the EU's response to the climate crisis came just weeks before COVID-19 erupted onto the global stage. Ursula von der Leyen, Head of the European Commission, presented the European Green Deal (EGD) to the world in December 2019. In early 2020, the EU was quick to acknowledge the connection between the climate crisis and the pandemic and doubled down on the EGD as its main policy framework for tackling both crises, hailing it as a “lifeline out of the COVID-19 crisis” (European Commission, &lt;span&gt;n.d.&lt;/span&gt;). This article seeks to evaluate that claim by applying an ecofeminist perspective to question the prevailing orthodoxy upheld by the EGD. Ecofeminism is an umbrella term, as Karen Warren (&lt;span&gt;1994&lt;/span&gt;) has suggested: one that captures a multitude of perspectives on the nature of connections within social systems of domination and is premised on the intersections and interconnectedness of people, nature, and the environment. As a theoretical framework, it is a way to frame the analysis of power within structures of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, and the role of institutions and policies in reproducing that power wi","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 3","pages":"311-330"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/lapo.12211","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50128141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A global and historical exploration: Legislative reform in Muslim family laws in Muslim-majority versus Muslim-minority countries","authors":"Yüksel Sezgin","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12210","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Thirty-five Muslim-majority and 18 Muslim-minority countries formally integrate Muslim Family Laws (MFLs) into their legal systems and enforce them through state courts. Both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority governments have undertaken legislative reforms to alleviate the effects of religious laws on fundamental human rights, increase accountability and accessibility, and strengthen the rule of law within their MFL systems. Extant literature is silent on whether MFLs are more reformed or more human rights and the rule of law compliant in Muslim-majority or Muslim-minority countries. Utilizing a novel methodological tool, the MFL Index, this exploratory article surveys cross-national and historical trends in MFL reform (1946–2016). It shows that Muslim-majority and -minority governments have opted for different forms of legislative reform. Muslim-majority countries favored substantive reform, while Muslim-minority states prioritized exit reforms. The type and extent of reform were strongly associated with colonial heritage, secularism, women's activism, ethnoreligious diversity, and prevailing multicultural arrangements. These findings have implications for studying multicultural theory, human/women's rights, and democratization in the Muslim world and beyond.</p>","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 2","pages":"110-136"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50150671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jurisdictional games and decision making: The Belgian approach in dealing with migrant smuggling","authors":"Roxane de Massol de Rebetz","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12209","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The article presents a case study focusing on the Belgian approach to deal with migrant smuggling and more broadly on the governance of migrants in transit on its territory. Drawing from the literature on jurisdiction and scales and combining it with the scholarship on bureaucrats' decision making, the article sheds light on the messy dynamics and realities of legal governance of migrants transiting through Belgium in their journey to the United Kingdom. By focusing on the multilayered nature of the issue, the distinct legal regimes and the various actors involved, the article argues that the jurisdictional separation of the realms of criminal and administrative law enables a decision to mobilize a set of law over or in combination with another. The article explores the situation at the local and national scales and, as jurisdictions overlap and competences are scattered between distinct entities and actors, specific attention is paid to “passing the buck” behaviors and discourses which have substantial consequences for the situation of migrants in transit in Belgium.</p>","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 2","pages":"137-158"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/lapo.12209","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50150308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Undocumented consciousness: Citizenship and illegality in the lives of US citizen youth","authors":"Gabriela Gonzalez","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12207","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines the impact of immigration law on US citizens' understanding of legal status categories. Prior research on legal consciousness has uncovered the ways in which undocumented persons make sense of and navigate their legal position in society. Less is known, however, about the paradox of US citizen children who are legally protected by their citizenship yet grow up in the context of their parents' precarious immigration statuses. Drawing on interviews with US citizen youth and undocumented parents, I conceptualize the phenomenon of <i>undocumented consciousness</i> to explain how US citizens make sense of parental legal status vulnerability. By witnessing their parents' blocked opportunities from work, travel, and other aspects of life, youth begin to attach meaning to citizenship and its protections, all the while forming an understanding of what it means, practically, to live in the United States with and without legal status. Findings reveal the mechanisms by which it is possible for functions of immigration law to have adverse impacts on the lives of US citizens themselves.</p>","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 1","pages":"45-65"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/lapo.12207","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50131347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Explaining the variations in legal mobilization of environmental nongovernmental organizations in authoritarian China: A fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis","authors":"Huina Xiao,&nbsp;Chunyan Ding","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12208","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Despite the growing literature on legal mobilization under authoritarianism, the variations of legal mobilization in authoritarian regimes have been less studied. Drawing on a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis of 175 environmental public interest litigations from 2009 to 2019, as well as in-depth interviews with environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) representatives, this is the first article to present how organizational, political, legal, and social forces (which are demonstrated by six conditions: capacity, political embeddedness, political endorsement, access, legal stock, and alliance) combine to explain the variations of NGOs' environmental legal mobilization through the use of strategic and nonstrategic litigation in authoritarian China. Although the state's policy to pluralize regulatory actors to improve environmental governance has set up a relatively friendly institutional backdrop for environmental legal mobilization, this study finds that political forces such as the relationship between NGOs and the state and the ambivalent attitudes towards environmental protection between central and local government have significantly influenced the behavioral patterns of NGOs' legal mobilization. Moreover, this study uncovers four types of legal mobilization of Chinese environmental NGOs: allied mobilization, progressive mobilization, steered mobilization, and symbolic mobilization. This study enriches the understanding of the behavioral patterns of nonstate actors in legal mobilization in authoritarian regimes and beyond.</p>","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 2","pages":"181-210"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/lapo.12208","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50150307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Criminal history inquiries and minority threat in the legal profession: An analysis of law school and state bar admission applications","authors":"James M. Binnall,&nbsp;Nick Petersen","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12206","url":null,"abstract":"<p>While all but one U.S. law school and every state bar ask about criminal history on their admissions application, such inquiries vary considerably in the depth of information sought. One potential explanation for variations in the depth of criminal history inquiries among law schools and state bars relates to minority threat dynamics. Drawing on data quantifying the depth of criminal history inquiries for 190 ABA-approved law schools and all state bars, as well as school and state demographics, this study explores the issue for the first time. Negative binomial regressions reveal that law schools and state bars located in states with larger Black and Latino populations employ more probing criminal history inquiries. We also find that this relationship is parabolic—where the minority threat effect is negative in states with a critical mass of Black/Latino residents. Finally, minority threat effects for law school criminal history inquiries are moderated by state bar criminal history inquiries, suggesting that law schools are cued by state bar policies. These results provide some support for minority threat theory, informing debates about the continued use of criminal history inquiries to screen prospective law students and lawyers, and the inclusiveness of the legal profession generally.</p>","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 1","pages":"4-44"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50149895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Quarantined judicial expansion: The environmental legal entrepreneurship of Chinese courts, procuratorates, and NGOs","authors":"Yueduan Wang,&nbsp;Ying Xia","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12205","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Although judicial empowerment has become increasingly common worldwide, the expansion of judicial powers in authoritarian countries faces persistent obstacles, such as institutional dependence, lack of political clout, and the repression of civil society. Through empirically examining three cases of environmental legal entrepreneurship under China's new public interest litigation (PIL) system, this study aims to reevaluate the patterns and limits of judicial expansion under authoritarianism. It finds that Chinese judges, prosecutors, and NGOs have been able to leverage the PIL system and their respective institutional advantages to substantially expand judicial oversight on eco-environmental protection. However, the state has established boundaries for such legal entrepreneurship in terms of subject matter, institutional autonomy, and geographic reach, effectively confining them within political spheres considered unthreatening to the regime. Such quarantined judicial expansion shields relevant actors from authoritarian governments' tendency to suppress legal mobilization and thus may be a more viable form of judicial expansion in nondemocratic settings.</p>","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 2","pages":"159-180"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50139041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Law and the political stakes of global crises: Lessons from development practice for a coronavirus world","authors":"Deval Desai","doi":"10.1111/lapo.12203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12203","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Law has translated the coronavirus crisis into politically salient forms in people's lives, from states of emergency, to border closures, to mask mandates. Yet political theory work on these forms has focused on constraining arbitrary state power. In this paper, I try to broaden this focus. Substantively, I argue that policy and its implementation also matter to how we theorize the role of law in crises, in terms of how we understand the political power of society and its relationship to the state. Methodologically, I argue that thinking about law in this way is more than a complement to or replacement for thinking about constraints on arbitrariness. Rather, different forms of thinking about law and crisis should constantly be used to critique each other in order to pursue the sorts of legal innovations required by geomobile and interconnected crises. Given that the current pandemic and its broader consequences are still unfolding, I turn to development policy and practice to demonstrate the process and consequence of such ongoing critique in action. Studying rule of law reforms—including during the West African Ebola crisis—I show how practitioners continually reimagined law in ways that facilitated ongoing legal innovation that could adapt to the politics of the crisis.</p>","PeriodicalId":47050,"journal":{"name":"Law & Policy","volume":"45 3","pages":"273-291"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/lapo.12203","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50136645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}