Welcome to the Law and Society Review Blog

The editors of Law and Society Review have started this blog with the goal of facilitating broader dissemination of socio-legal research. We hope that this blog allows us to discuss scholarship and teach issues that may not make it to academic journals quickly. We invite everyone to contribute; we ask all authors to summarize their recent articles.

The blog will also allow us to discuss the changing research environment. We’d like to hear more people contribute to pressing conversations around research and publishing. Many of us already have these conversations among smaller groups of scholars. A blog will allow a larger conversation with more participants and, we hope, a greater diversity of views.

The questions to weigh in on are many. Professional associations and funding agencies occasion talk about the press for data access in both Europe and North America. What do you think about this issue, in every dimension from ethical to epistemological to administrative? What do we think about the use of Amazon Mechanical Turk as a research tool? How do ethical practices translate to obligations cross-nationally? What are ethical dilemmas in research resulting from the increasing availability of records on the internet? What do we do with what we know about the production of records by state agencies, including police, when big data analytics often do not rely on that knowledge?

We live in the midst of information overload, and the wish to cut through the noise allows elites to make simple false statements, repeating them over and over and possibly promoting significant policy changes. We do not know whether a blog making information more accessible will help counter ‘alternative facts.’ We do know we want to make the forum available.

Please send all proposed contributions to lsa5.lsrblog@blogger.com. Guidelines are on the ‘Guidelines’ tab.

We would like to thank Wiley and the Law and Society Association for their encouragement and Danielle McClellan for her help.

How do text messages complicate contemporary sexual assault adjudication?

By Heather Hlavka and Sameena Mulla
Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Marquette University

“There’s no video, no injury. It’s purely one hundred percent ‘he said, she said.’ They had a terrible relationship. They were nasty to each other and they don’t get along well, probably never will. But there is no evidence to support the state’s case, other than their words.” Our article, “’That’s How She Talks’: Animating Text Message Evidence in the Sexual Assault Trial,” begins with these familiar words offered by a defense attorney during a sexual assault trial in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The oft-invoked trope of “he said, she said” in cases of sexual violence suggests that without third-party eye witness testimony or material evidence, sexual assault allegations rest on conflicting reports provided by victims, the accused, and other witnesses. But how do trial attorneys reinvent this trope when the words of the witnesses are preserved as text messages?

Text messages are recorded co…

Submit Your Papers to Law & Society Review!

Rebecca L. Sandefur

The Law and Society Association and the whole field of law and society research owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Jeannine Bell, Susan Sterett, and Margot Young, for their work as Editors of Law & Society Review.As incoming Editor, I am grateful to them for their stewardship of the journal, their generous support of authors and aspiring authors, and their innovations to the Review, including this blog.
The incoming Editorial Board has begun receiving new manuscripts as they are submitted. Jon Gould, Robert Lawless , Elizabeth Mertz, Jennifer Robbennolt and Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve have generously agreed to serve in this role. Together with participation from the Editorial Advisory Board -- a group deeply appreciated and too numerous to list here -- these scholars’ contributions expand the expertise of the journal’s editorial office across disciplines, methods, theoretical traditions, and regions of the world. Danielle McClellan continues to steady the ship …

TASER Technology and Police Officers’ Understanding and Use of Force

Michael Sierra-Arévalo
Rutgers University-Newark

The TASER--a weapon that uses electric current to incapacitate a subject by causing complete neuromuscular incapacitation--is ubiquitous among U.S. police officers. Spurred by pressure to reduce the lethality of police force, this force technology it is now used by more than 17,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Proponents of TASERs are quick to point out that research shows that most TASER deployments do not result in serious injury or death, and that TASERs provide officers with a useful, less-than-lethal alternative to their firearms. TASER critics, in turn, emphasize that even if TASERs are rarely lethal, 50,000 volts cause excruciating pain, fear, and psychological distress. They further emphasize that the TASER, like any weapon, can still be misused by police officers.

Though a large body of research examines police force, little is known about how officers make their use-of-force decisions in light of this new, less-than-lethal t…

Law & Society Review

Search This Blog