Constructing ‘active citizenship’: single mothers,welfare, and the logics of voluntarism

Across welfare states, rights-based conceptions of citizenship are losing ground to obligation-centred notions. Drawing on in-depth longitudinal interviews with lone mothers receiving income assistance in British Columbia during a period of significant welfare reform, we explore the mothers' practices and narratives of volunteer labour in relation to conceptions of ‘active citizenship’. Volunteer work and the narratives women construct about it emerge as key sites of struggle and tension over the meaning of motherhood, work, and social contribution.     

Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation

A substantial body of sociolegal scholarship suggests that the legitimacy of the law crucially depends on the public's perception that legal processes are fair. The bulk of this research relies on an underdeveloped account of the material and institutional contexts of litigants' perceptions of fairness. We introduce an analysis of situated justice to capture a contextualized conception of how litigants narrate fairness in their actual legal encounters. Our analysis draws on 100 in‐depth interviews with defendant's representatives, plaintiffs, and lawyers involved in employment discrimination lawsuits, selected as part of a multimethod study of 1,788 discrimination cases filed in U.S. district courts between 1988 and 2003. This article offers two key empirical findings, the first at the level of individual perceptions and the second at the level of legal institutions. First, we find that neither defendants' representatives nor plaintiffs believe discrimination law is fair. Rather than sharing a complaint, however, each side sees unfairness only in those aspects of the process that work to their disadvantage. Second, we demonstrate that the very notion of fairness can belie structural asymmetries that, overall, profoundly benefit employers in employment discrimination lawsuits. We conclude by discussing how a situated justice analysis calls for a rethinking of empirical research on fairness. Audio recordings of respondents quoted in this article are available online. ¹      

Regulation of legal services in the e-world: a need to short circuit hot spots in ethics and novel practices?

This paper examines the professional and regulatory implications for legal practices of a rapidly evolving legal services marketplace shaped by new technologies and e-spaces. The paper focuses on three burgeoning areas in the delivery of legal services: (i) legal outsourcing; (ii) virtual law firms; and (iii) use of social media networking. The authors examine how Australian legal practitioners are utilising these new practices and technologies and the ethical implications of their use. The paper argues that the current regulatory framework in Australia does not adequately address the challenges and concerns raised by an increasingly borderless and e-based legal services market and thus calls for Australian legal regulators to remedy this deficiency as a matter of priority.     

The Relationship Between Anxiety Disorders and Substance Use Among Adolescents in the Community: Specificity and Gender Differences

Using a sample of 781 adolescents (ages 13–17, 52.8% male) from a community survey, this study examined gender differences in the co-occurrence of specific anxiety disorders with substance use in adolescents. The associations between anxiety disorders and substance use differed according to the particular anxiety disorders and forms of substance use being examined, as well as by gender. Social phobia was associated with cigarette smoking among boys only. For girls, social phobia appeared to be negatively associated with drug use. For the other anxiety disorders, the associations with substance use tended to be stronger among girls. These findings highlight the need to improve clinical recognition of the anxiety disorders and to improve treatment access for afflicted adolescents. Future studies based on longitudinal data could further elucidate the relationships among anxiety disorders, gender, and substance use.