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.     

Home, Sweet Home

THE Englishman’s home is his castle, or so they say. It’s a safe haven, a place where strangers may enter only if invited. It’s a private place where each of us can have a different persona from the one that we portray in our hours at work. Instead of being smart, cultured, controlled, authoritative, we are allowed to be untidy and lazy.     

No Man Is an Island

No man is an island, entire of itself.-John Donne, poet (1572-1631)LAST month I celebrated the fortieth anniversary of my relationship with Stephanie, the woman who is now my wife.     

Youth Unemployment： An Impending Scourge on Society.

TODAY’S news media are full of tales about the state of the European economies, especially about the unsustainable levels of national debt funding the social programs of Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland, amongst others. There are joyous reports of the negotiations and disagreements between the UK and the Eurozone countries, as the UK says: "The Eurozone must now resolve its own selfmade crisis. We’ll do our bit, but remember that we have our own problems in the UK." The reality is that the UK does