Aguiar Aguilar, A. A. (2023). Courts and the judicial erosion of democracy in Latin America. Politics & Policy, 51(1), 7-25. How are courts used to erode democracy? Using the literature on democratic backsliding and judicial politics as a theoretical framework, in this work, Aguiar Aguilar shows the path of how courts are captured by incumbents and then …
Batesmith, Alex. “Lawyers Who Want to Make the World a Better Place – Scheingold and Sarat’s Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering.” In Leading Works on the Legal Profession, 1st ed., Routledge, 2023. Scheingold and Sarat’s Something to Believe In (2004) remains a foundational statement on cause lawyering—one that challenges the narrow …
Batesmith, Alex, and Kieran McEvoy. “‘Closeted’ Cause Lawyering in Authoritarian Cambodia.” Law & Society Review 59 (2025): 463–495. doi:10.1017/lsr.2025.29. In this article, the authors analyze how lawyers in Cambodia pursue social justice, human rights, and rule-of-law commitments while navigating an increasingly repressive authoritarian environment. Drawing from seven years of interviews with 37 Cambodian lawyers and …
Levin, Leslie C., The Use of State Discipline to Sanction Attorneys General and Other High-Ranking Legal Officers (November 15, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5753303 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5753303 The United States Attorney General, state attorneys general, and high-ranking officials in their offices, like all lawyers, are subject to rules of professional conduct. Increasingly, when they push the boundaries of these …
In an unprecedented move, longtime federal judge Mark Wolf resigned from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts after more than 40 years of service, publicly condemning President Donald Trump as an “existential threat to democracy.” In an essay in The Atlantic, Wolf said he could no longer remain silent under judicial ethics …
Alex, H. (2025). Fuzzy Boundaries: A Mechanism for Group Accumulation of Advantage. Sociological Theory, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751251378516 This article describes a strategic mechanism, fuzzy boundaries, that groups use to accumulate advantage. In contrast to the dominant view that rigid, well-defined boundaries maximize group rewards, I argue that ambiguity in membership criteria can, under certain conditions, more …
Satterthwaite, M. L., Sydow, K., & Polk, B. (2023). Unchecking Power and Capturing Courts: How Autocratization Erodes Independent Judicial Systems. Rutgers UL Rev., 76, 1147. The paper argues that courts have increasingly taken on legislative functions by issuing structural reform injunctions—broad, ongoing orders designed to overhaul public institutions such as prisons, schools, and mental hospitals. …
Mather, Lynn and Levin, Leslie C., When and Why Do Lawyer Organizations Seek to Influence Law? (2022). Lawyers in 21st Century Societies: Volume 2 (2022), University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2022-007, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4213604 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4213604 Lawyers seek to influence law through advocacy for individual clients, but also through collective efforts. …
Khalil, H. M. (2024). “This Country has Laws”: Legalism as a Tool of Entrenching Autocracy in Egypt. American Behavioral Scientist, 68(12), 1597-1615. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241267936 (Original work published 2024) This article investigates the role of legalism and legal processes in entrenching autocratic rule in post-revolution Egypt. In the aftermath of the spectacular street protests that swept Egypt, …
Trochev, Alexei, ‘Pliant Courts, Recalcitrant Chiefs and Judicial Clientelism in Authoritarian Regimes’, in Björn Dressel, Raul Sanchez-Urribarri, and Alexander Stroh-Steckelberg (eds), Informality and Courts: Comparative Perspectives (Edinburgh, 2024; online edn, Edinburgh Scholarship Online, 18 Sept. 2025), https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781399535250.003.0005, accessed 6 Oct. 2025. How and why do some autocracies have pliant courts yet recalcitrant judicial chiefs? Trochev argue that is an unexpected consequence of empowering the …