Legal mobilization in schools: the paradox of rights and race among youth

The diffusion of federal Title IX complaints throughout U.S. colleges and universities, 1994-2014

This article uses an original dataset of federal Title IX complaints to assess whether and how mobilization of the law to confront sexual harassment has diffused throughout four-year (and above) nonprofit colleges and universities. Event history analyses show that complaints spread more rapidly among schools of similar selectivity as well as among institutions linked by a new indicator for social proximity-school Twitter ties-that encompasses multiple forms of social proximity simultaneously. The same diffusion patterns do not emerge for other types of sex discrimination complaints filed under Title IX, indicating that networks channel the capacity to mobilize law differently across different types of claims. The findings illuminate a dramatic transformation in the deployment of Title IX that has reshaped how colleges and universities govern gender relations.

In-services and empty threats: The roles of organizational practices and workplace experiences in shaping U.S. educators' understandings of students' rights

This paper applies theoretical frameworks from organizational sociology and sociolegal studies to examine factors associated with educators' conceptions of students' rights to due process in disciplinary actions. We analyze a unique representative data set of 402 teachers and 200 administrators in U.S. high schools to investigate how educators understand the rights to due process articulated in the Supreme Court case of Goss v. Lopez (1975). We then examine whether individual characteristics and participation in organizational processes are associated with educators' understandings of students' due process rights. Findings suggest that educators' understandings of students' entitlements to due process vary with educators' level of education, experience of school-related legal threats, and participation in district or diocese in-service training programs on students' rights. Results point to organizational climate as a key factor in shaping educators' rights conceptions and the role of law in American schools.