Shauhin Talesh's Article Accepted for Publication in the Law & Society Review

JSP graduate student Shauhin Talesh has received an acceptance from the Law & Society Review for his article, "The Privatization of Public Legal Rights: How Manufacturers Constructthe Meaning of Law"

Shauhin's article demonstrates how the content and meaning of California's
consumer protection laws were shaped by automobile manufacturers, the very
group these laws were designed to regulate. His analysis draws on and links
two literatures that examine the relationship between law and organizations
but often overlook one another: political science studies of how businesses
influence public legal institutions and neo-institutional sociology studies
of how organizations shape law within their organizational field. By
integrating these literatures, he develops an "institutional-political"
theory that demonstrates how organizations' construction of law and
compliance within an organizational field shapes the meaning of law among
legislators and judges.

Gwen Leachman wins LSA Student Article Prize

JSP/JD student Gwendolyn Leachman will be awarded the Law and Society Association's Best Graduate Student Paper prize at the 2009 annual meeting next month in Denver. Gwen was chosen for her paper "Who Frames the Message? Countermovements and Public Perception of Social Movements’ Legal Agendas."

Abstract: Social conservatives have historically used populist
rhetoric and “activist judges” framing to de-legitimate progressive
social movements’ litigation strategies. In this paper, I show that
opponents to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights
have used these discursive resources to draw attention to same-sex
marriage litigation – a tactic that constitutes only a small part of
the LGBT movement’s legal docket. I argue that as a result of this
resonant countermovement framing, the LGBT movement has become widely
mischaracterized in the mainstream media, in academia, and within the
movement itself as dominated by its focus on same-sex marriage. This
paper therefore demonstrates how a social movement’s litigation
strategy can be used to support countermovement rhetoric, which may in
turn distort a movement’s message and its public identity.