Lawyers for Conservative Causes: Clients, Ideology, and Social Distance

Scholars have devoted attention to "cause lawyers" on the political left, but lawyers who work on the conservative side of the American political spectrum have received relatively little academic consideration. This article presents systematic data on the characteristics of and relationships among lawyers affiliated with organizations active on a selected set of 17 conservative issues. We find that the lawyers serve several separate and distinct constituencies—business conservatives, Christian conservatives, libertarians, abortion opponents—and that the credentials of the lawyers serving these varying constituencies differ significantly. The greatest degree of social separation occurs between the business constituency and the abortion opponents, with another clear separation between libertarians and the interest groups devoted to traditional family values and order maintenance. The divisions among these constituencies appear to reflect the difference between "insider politics" and "populism," which is manifested in part in actual geographic separation between lawyers located in the District of Columbia and those in the South, West, and Midwest. In the center of the network, however, we find some potential "mediators"—prominent lawyers who may facilitate communication and coordination among the several constituencies. These lawyers and the organizations they serve attempt to merge morality, market freedom, and individual liberty concerns, and they convene meetings of diverse sets of lawyers and organizational leaders to seek consensus on policy goals. Nonetheless, the findings indicate that most organizations are seldom active on issues that lie beyond the relatively narrow boundaries of their own interests.     

Lawyers' Roles in Voluntary Associations: Declining Social Capital?

The extent and nature of lawyers'participation in civic life probably has important effects on the character of the community's activity and its out-comes. Where and how lawyers participate in voluntary associations may influence the ability of those organizations to function within the larger structure of American institutions.
This paper compares findings from two surveys of Chicago lawyers, the first conducted in 1975 and the second in 1994-95. Contrary to some expectations, the available evidence does not suggest that community activities of lawyers decreased. Moreover, lawyers'energies in 1995 appear to have been devoted more often to socially concerned organizations, those with a reformist agenda, than had been the case in 1975. The types of organizations with the greatest increase in activity were religious and civic associations. A smaller percentage of the respondents held leadership positions in 1995 than in 1975, but, because of a doubling in the number of lawyers, the best estimate is that the bar's absolute level of contribution to community leadership did not change greatly.
In both 1975 and 1995, a hierarchy of social prestige appears to have influenced the pattern of lawyers'community activities. Lawyers who had higher incomes, were middle-aged, were Protestants, and who had attended elite law schools were more likely to be active or leaders in most kinds of organizations. In ethnic and fraternal organizations, however, the elites of the profession had relatively low rates of participation, while government lawyers, solo practitioners, and graduates of less prestigious law schools predominated. Status hierarchies within the broader community—as well as social differences in taste, preference, or "culture"—clearly penetrate the bar.     

Political Lawyers: The Structure of a National Network

Some research on lawyers active in politics has found that the ties among them create networks in which a center or core of influential actors is surrounded by more peripheral participants. Other studies, however, found more segmented networks, sometimes lacking central players. This research examines the structure and determinants of political ties among forty‐seven elite lawyers who served organizations prominent in fourteen national policy issues in 2004–05. The analysis finds a network structure that resembles a rough circle with Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other. Lawyers affiliated with organizations representing a broad constellation of interests are closer to the center of the network, while those working for specialized or narrow causes tend to be located in the periphery. Ties are more dense among conservatives than among liberals. Lawyers who work as organizational leaders or managers are more likely to be near the center than are litigators. Central actors contribute larger amounts to election campaigns. The organized bar, especially the American Bar Association, appears to provide links between liberals and conservatives in one segment of the network.     

Varieties of Joint Decision Making: The Second Federal Reform

Germany recently experienced another federal reform, shortly after a previous modification to the German federal system. Has the second federal reform brought substantial change instead of the gradual change that literature on joint decision making would lead us to expect? This article analyses the reform in three stages: agenda setting, negotiation, and ratification; and suggests that at best the new restrictions upon public debt brought about by the second federal reform can be seen as a substantial change, but only if actors comply with them. Furthermore, this note argues that varieties of joint decision making can be identified in German constitutional policy, as they can in German public policy and EU policies. Patterns of joint decision making vary, depending on agenda setting and negotiations, so that the article argues for a differentiated view of joint decision making, the joint decision trap and exits from the joint decision trap.     

Attitudes Towards Severity of Punishment: A Conjoint Analytic Approach

Past research suggests that attitudes towards severity of punishment are affected by crime‐specific factors. The impact of such factors has usually been investigated by between‐subjects designs. The studies reported in this paper, however, are based on within‐subjects designs, using conjoint analysis for data collection and analysis. Study 1 employs a rape scenario for investigating the impact of the victim–offender relationship and of two victim characteristics – provocative behavior and intoxication. Study 2 uses a theft and an assault scenario for analyzing the influence of several offender and crime characteristics on sanctioning: offender's age, readiness to confess, previous convictions, and severity of the offense. Results from both studies are reported and discussed in terms of utility values. These values represent the importance placed on the case characteristics focused upon. In addition to the general evaluation of case characteristics, inter‐individual differences are analyzed by means of hierarchical cluster analysis. Advantages of the conjoint analytic approach over conventional research methods on sanctioning behavior are discussed.