Labor Rights for All? The Role of Undocumented Immigrant Status for Worker Claims Making

Drawing on forty-one interviews with both documented and undocumented Latino restaurant workers in San Jose, California, and Houston, Texas, this article examines how documentation status shapes the legal consciousness of immigrant workers. I identify three common narratives that undocumented workers provide to justify not making claims on workplace protection. First, I highlight that an ever-present fear of deportation inhibits any formal confrontation. Second, I demonstrate how undocumented status leaves undocumented immigrants with a particularly pragmatic and short-term understanding of their working life in the United States, rendering their working conditions temporary and endurable to them. Third, I expand Gordon and Lenhardt's (2008 ) discussion of the centrality of work to the American conception of citizenship. I reiterate that this particular sense of belonging is situated vis-à-vis other low-wage workers. These findings provide sociolegal scholars important theoretical contributions for crafting a research agenda on the role of undocumented status and legal mobilization.     

Natural Resource Damages for Climate Change—An Idea Whose Time Is Not Yet Come,Part II: Climate Change NRD Claims—Get Coverage

Climate change litigation is in its infancy. As it matures, one type of suit that may emerge is a climate change-based natural resource damages (NRD) claim under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). While it is unlikely that climate change-based NRD claims could succeed under current law, a policyholder sued for such claims should be entitled to a defense under its liability insurance policies. Against the backdrop of some recent climate change lawsuits, this article anticipates insurance industry arguments against coverage for climate change NRD claims, and examines counter arguments in favor of coverage for such claims.     

Whose Best Practices? The Significance of Context in and for Transnational Criminal Justice Indicators

To what extent is it possible to identify transnational good or best practice and what are the difficulties and challenges in doing so validly? The claim made in this article is that it may be helpful to examine the spread of global social indicators as a series of projects that themselves reproduce ideas of what counts as ‘good’ practice. This will help identify the ‘politics of comparison’ in each case. Taking as an example recent calls for criminologists to engage with the global targets for change set by the United Nations, the article discusses the aims of comparison, the uses of indicators, and the way that commensuration misrepresents contexts in the drive to evaluate local conditions in terms of overarching standards. It then revisits the debate concerning the so‐called knowledge and governance ‘effects’ of global social indicators.     

Whose Fault Is it Anyway? Political Orientation, Attributions of Responsibility, and Support for the War in Iraq

Political orientation has been shown to be a strong predictor of attitudes toward war. Specifically, political conservatism has been associated with increased support for war and with decreased attribution of responsibility for war to one’s own government. The present research aims to test whether the relationship between political orientation and support for the war in Iraq is mediated by attributions of government responsibility. In Study 1, survey data showed that the relationship between political orientation and support for the Iraq war was mediated by beliefs about the US government’s motivations for the war. Study 2 provided a conceptual replication of the proposed mediation model and extended the findings from beliefs about US government motivations to perceived threat from the pre-war Iraqi government. Study 3 used an experimental paradigm to manipulate perceived threat to show that such beliefs directly affected support for the war. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Who Has to Pay for Periods of Insolvent Insurance in Long-Tail Coverage Claims? New Jersey High Court Changes the Game in Favor of Policyholders

Two new cases have changed the game in New Jersey for allocating defense and indemnity costs in long-tail environmental or toxic tort claims. The high court has established that solvent insurers must absorb insolvent insurers’ share of costs in long-tail claims until all solvent insurance is exhausted, at which time insolvent shares will be borne by the Property-Liability Guaranty Association. In addition, the high court has established that insurers have a right of contribution against other insurers when they pay more than their allocated share of defense or indemnity.     

What’s in a Name? Organizational,Environmental, and Cultural Factors on Support for Community Policing in Turkey and the U.S.

Community policing (COP) represents officers’ expectations of police work that revolves around specific order maintenance chores that take place within the community. It is generally assumed that police officers are cognizant of the community policing type activities occurring in police organizations where COP is either formally or informally adopted. However, very little research has been done to examine whether or not police officers in other countries are engaging in similar COP type activities without the organizational endorsement or official implementation of community policing as it is known in the U.S. and elsewhere. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we compare law enforcement officers’ attitudes toward their conceptions of police work with specific attention to order maintenance and community oriented type police activities in two countries, Turkey (no formal COP programs) and the U.S. (formal and informal COP programs). Secondly, we examine to what extent police organizational and environmental factors in these two countries influence officers’ conceptions of community-oriented policing activities. Findings suggest that, relative to Turkey, U.S. police officers have a favorable disposition toward COP type activities, suggesting name does matter. However, findings in both countries also suggest that officers’ orientation to police work that is reflective of the police operational philosophy, and the organizational and environmental factors are better predictors of COP type activities.