American Society And The Rule Of Law

I am here to bring some thoughts about my own country\u27s experience in trying to understand the meaning of the rule of law and to make good on its promise. I will have to take up some issues in jurisprudence, and also some aspects of American legal history. I do not apologize for combining jurisprudence and sociology of law, for that combination faithfully reflects what we are trying to achieve in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program (JSP) in the Boalt School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. I begin with some comments on the meaning of the rule of law, then go on to consider some important lessons of American history, including problems we face today. The first thing we must say is that the phrase rule of law refers to an ideal, something that we look to as a criterion or standard of good conduct, especially but not exclusively official conduct. Rule of law is a way of saying that the rules and procedures of a legal system must meet-or at least strive to meet-tests or standards, which are drawn from fairness and justice. Therefore we must say that the rule of law is law plus standards

Legal Institutions and Social Controls

When the architects of this program asked me to discuss non-legal social controls, I assume they had in mind the need for greater humility within the legal profession. So proud an occasion as this calls for sober reflection on the limits of the distinctively legal-on the contingent, derivative, and partial place of formal adjudication and control within the larger ordering of human society. I have no objection to communicating such a perspective, there by adding an appropriate note of piety to these proceedings. Nevertheless, I think it may be more important for us to consider some of the great social changes that are occurring in modem society, how they affect the balance between legal and non-legal controls, and what problems this changing balance poses for the legal order. The humility we ask of lawyers may be all too welcome to them. The real message may be a summons to responsibility and joint effort, not a suggestion that lawyers retreat to what they know best. My assigned topic covers a very large part of what sociology (or more broadly, behavioral science) is about. For we are interested in all the ways social order is created and sustained. We study control in small groups and large ones; we study gross mechanisms of control and subtle ones; we see in every human setting the forces that encourage and enforce responsible conduct. Of course, we also give much attention to the breakdown of social control and to the emergence of what is, from the standpoint of the group or situation, irresponsible or deviant behavior

Allies Already Poised to Comply: How Social Proximity Affects Lactation-at-Work Law Compliance

This study demonstrates how legal compliance may be better achieved when organizations include individuals who will advocate for newly codified rights and related accommodations. To understand compliance with a new law and the rights it confers, this article examines as its case study the Lactation at Work law, which amends the Fair Labor Standards Act to mandate basic provisions for employees to express breast milk at work. In particular, this study interviewed those organizational actors who translate the law into the policies affecting workers\u27 daily lives: supervising mangers and human resources personnel. Those studied in this article were “Allies Already:” friends or relatives of breastfeeding workers, or ones themselves, who held pro‐breastfeeding values and understood the complexities of combining lactation and employment. They mobilized within their organization to comply with the law swiftly and fully—often even overcomplying. This article demonstrates how heightened compliance, particularly with new laws, may be achieved even without directly affected actors mobilizing their own rights if allies champion needed accommodations

The collapse of intermediate structures?

How can we explain the rise of President Trump and the attraction of his campaign behavior before and since he took office? We argue here that the collapse of ‘intermediate structures’ has been a key factor; that the associations and groups which are building blocks of pluralistic politics have been eroded to such an extent that Trump’s personality politics have been able to take over the political stage

Stretching and challenging the boundaries of law: varieties of knowledge in biotechnologies regulation

The paper addresses the question of adaptation of existing regulatory frameworks in the face of innovation in biotechnologies, and specifically the roles played in this by various expert knowledge practices. We identify two overlapping ideal types of adaptation: first, the stretching and maintenance of a pre-existing legal framework, and second, a breaking of existing classifications and establishment of a novel regime. We approach this issue by focusing on varieties of regulatory knowledge which, contributing to and parting of political legitimacy, in principle enable the making of legally binding decisions about risks and benefits of technologies. We base the discussion around two case studies, one of animal biotechnology ethical regulation, the other of ‘advanced therapy’ medicinal product regulation, both in the context of European Union frameworks. Specifically, we explore the knowledge configurations constituting expert committees and other institutional formations of expert regulatory knowledge in their political context. We show that where sectoral and moral boundaries are challenged, different modes of regulatory knowledge beyond scientific forms – legal, procedural, moral, economic and industrial – can shape regulatory innovations either by maintenance of regimes through commensuration and stretching, or through differentiation and separation creating new frameworks. We conclude that establishing an essential techno-scientific difference between pre-existing and novel technologies does not in itself require new regulatory structures, and that the regulatory strategy that is followed will be determined by a combination of different forms of knowledge