CIVIL LITIGATION IN ILLINOIS TRIAL COURTS

This article analyzes civil litigation in Illinois trial courts for the years 1965, 1970, and 1975 using county-level data. Of particular interest is the relationship between civil litigation on one hand and socioeconomic and political culture indicators on the other. Borrowing from the idea of a social development perspective, the analysis emphasizes rural-urban differences. It shows that higher rates of litigation tend to be characteristic of more urbanized, somewhat more culturally modern, and slightly more industrialized counties; and that lower rules tend to be characteristic of more rural, agricultural, and somewhat more traditional counties. Although the data are limited, the analysis also finds some broad rural-urban differences in trial court business. Overall, socioeconomic indicators appear to be more important, with political culture playing only a secondary or tertiary role.     

Indian 'Compensatory Discrimination' and American 'Affirmative Action': Some Parallels—A Review of Galanter's Competing Equalities*

What importance does Galanter's Competing Equalities have for non-Indianists or, more specifically, for American students of law and social change with respect to racial and ethnic discrimination? To engage in understatement, much.     

ETHNICITY AND JUDGES' SENTENCING DECISIONS: HISPANIC-BLACK-WHITE COMPARISONS

This study uses data on Pennsylvania sentencing practices to compare the sentence outcomes of white, black, and Hispanic defendants. Besides the overall more lenient treatment of white defendants, our main finding is that Hispanic defendants are the defendant subgroup most at risk to receive the harshest penalty. This pattern is held across all comparisons—i.e., for both the in/out and term-length decisions and for both drug and nondrug cases. These findings are consistent with the "focal concerns" framework on sentencing and with hypotheses drawn from the writings on prejudice and inter group hostility suggesting that the specific social and historical context facing Hispanic Americans will exacerbate perceptions of their cultural dissimilarity and the "threat" they pose.     

Play on!

RECENTLY,I found myself in Seoul,at the invitation of Arts Council Korea. During the course of my stay,I enjoyed one of the most moving artistic experiences I have had in many years. It was my first     

Television and the Incumbency Advantage in U.S. Elections

We use the structure of media markets within states and across state boundaries to study the relationship between television and electoral competition. In particular, we compare incumbent vote margins in media markets where content originates in the same state as media consumers versus vote margins where content originates out of state. This contrast provides a clear test of whether or not television coverage correlates with the incumbency advantage. We study U.S. Senate and state gubernatorial races from the 1950s through the 1990s and find that the effect of TV is small, directionally indeterminate, and statistically insignificant.