Matthew Clair

@mathuclair.bsky.social

1285 Followers 451 Following

Associate Professor of Sociology at Stanford and author of PRIVILEGE & PUNISHMENT www.matthewclair.org

Panelists at the LSA conference looking toward the audience. From L to R: Marisa Omori, Michelle Phelps, John Halushka, Mona Lynch, and Javier Wilenmann
Me standing in front of Stanford’s main quad in my doctoral regalia. I’m holding books in my left hand, which I needed to return to the library just before that year’s graduation ceremony
This article outlines a relational theory of legal inequality through a review of recent studies of crime, law, and deviance. I argue that three relational mechanisms—claims-making, social closure, and exploitation—sharpen insight into the way material (e.g., police services, jobs in prison) and symbolic (e.g., legal recognition, dignity) resources are unequally distributed within and between organizations in the criminal legal system. While the criminal legal literature has long sought to document inequality among social groups subordinated within legal organizations (e.g., the poor or people of color in courts), a relational theory expands inquiry in two novel directions. First, future research could deepen analysis of criminal legal organizations as workplaces, not just as social control institutions. As workplaces, legal organizations may reproduce inequality between legal professionals (e.g., prosecutors, public defenders, social workers), with implications for those subject to the law. Second, future research could further examine how field-level relations between organizations (e.g., public defender's office, reentry center, victim services unit) reproduce inequality through competition over resources. Relations between organizations determine the kinds of resources available for distribution within organizations. I conclude with several propositions for future research into the relational mechanisms that reproduce and challenge inequality in the criminal legal system.
Abstract Many legal disputes are resolved through settlement. The dominant theory explaining settlements – known as “bargaining in the shadow of the law” – assumes that litigants are informed, rational actors inclined to bargain toward a settlement prior to court proceedings. Yet many settlements are negotiated after litigants have appeared in court expecting to go to trial. This article argues that court organizational mechanisms play an undertheorized role in facilitating settlement agreements. To build theory on organizational mechanisms, we examine the case of eviction settlements. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews in a California eviction court, we find that organizational rules and workgroup norms funnel mostly unrepresented tenants – sometimes, in coercive ways – into unregulated hallway conversations with landlord attorneys and/or participation in the court’s mediation program. Through relational interactions with legal professionals in these organizational spaces, tenants are taught the risks of trial and the benefits of settlement. As a result, most tenants in our sample come to recognize their legal culpability and view settlement agreements as legitimate, even as their negotiated settlements reproduce their housing insecurity. We discuss implications for bargaining theory and research on housing insecurity.
Abstract: This article reviews cultural sociological approaches to law and considers how they may sharpen analysis of social crises. As the United States faces myriad law-related crises, such as rising authoritarianism, regulatory capture, and police violence, the cultural study of law has become an urgent endeavor. Culture constitutes and shapes law, especially in unsettled times. Five concepts have dominated the cultural study of law: rules, norms, frames, cultural capital, and legal consciousness. Future research would benefit from more precise considerations of how rules and norms operate in unsettled times. One way forward is specifying how frames, cultural capital, and legal consciousness shape and are shaped by changing rules and norms. Moreover, future research could leverage each concept to sharpen understandings of social control, inequality, and regulatory compliance in understudied contexts, along understudied axes of stratification, and with respect to the infusion of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, into the law.
Flyer “calling all scholar-activists” to apply for fellowships with the Center for Engaged Scholarship. Application period is between October 1-December 1.
Title: The study of culture, law, and crisis Author: Matthew Clair, Stanford University Date: July 2025 Abstract: This paper reviews cultural sociological approaches to the study of law and how they may be applied to future research on law-related social crises. As the world faces myriad social crises, such as rising authoritarianism and police violence, the study of culture and the law has become an even more urgent intellectual and practical endeavor. Over the last decade, five concepts have dominated the cultural study of law: rules, norms, frames, cultural capital, and legal consciousness. While past research has provided generative insight, future research would benefit from more precise considerations of rules and norms in this unsettled moment. Moreover, future research could leverage the five cultural concepts to sharpen understandings of inequality and social control in understudied legal organizations, along understudied axes of social stratification, and with respect to the infusion of new technologies into the legal system. Acknowledgments: Thank you to Asad L. Asad, Sarah Brayne, and Barbara Kiviat for comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Front cover of Stitt’s new book