Category: Member Publications
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Governing Gendered Violence
How do law enforcement personnel govern gender-based violence? The answer, it turns out, depends on howdisempowered they feel relative to women making legal claims. Law enforcement disempowerment, its sources, and consequences for the regulation of gender-based violence, is the focus of my article “Incorporation: Governing Gendered Violence in a state of disempowerment” (American Journal of…
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Gendered Legal Attitude Formation: Reasonable and Unreasonable Punishments
I met Marcela at her four-year college. Two years prior, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had entered her home, arrested her father, and drove away with him without much of an explanation. Later that day, her father called to tell her ICE had deported him. She recalled thinking at that time, “Obviously, it’s not fair.…
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How courts classify sexualities
How do courts make decisions about people’s sexualities? That is the question at the core of my recent book, Sorting Sexualities: Expertise and the Politics of Legal Classification. The deceptively simple answer is… it depends. In my book, I examine how courts classify individuals’ sexualities in two legal domains that seem diametrically opposed: LGBTQ asylum…
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How objects guide discretion and counteract stereotypes
What role do objects play in shaping people’s decisions? It turns out they matter quite a lot. My article reveals that material objects can counteract race- and class-based stereotypes. I use a study of building inspectors in Chicago to demonstrate that material objects play a significant role in how people with discretion make decisions. Objects…
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Going with the Flow of Lawyers
by Sida Liu The mobility of lawyers is like the flow of water. This is something I found in a recent article “Professional Flows: Lateral Moves of Law Firm Partners in Hong Kong, 1994-2018.” Since my years as a graduate student, I have always been fascinated by how lawyers move round. Some move geographically, from…
Sociology of Law 