Laura Beth Nielsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 308479 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura Beth Nielsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura Beth |
| FAMILY NAME | Nielsen |
| SIGNATURE | NIELSEN L B |
| AFFILIATIONS | American Bar Foundation |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4802-4223 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 339 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Learning the Rules of the Game: Sexual Adaptation and Boundary Maintenance Among U.S. College Students
A Face-to-Face Approach to Preventing Campus Sexual Assault
Laura Beth Nielsen on balancing response with prevention efforts
Relational rights and legal consciousness research: Theoretical and methodological innovations
Legal consciousness is one of the most important, novel concepts in socio-legal research of the past half-century. Emerging from the Amherst School of Law and Society in the United States (US), legal consciousness refers to the ways in which individuals perceive, interpret, and interact with law in their daily lives. It encompasses the subjective understandings and experiences of law, as well as the implicit attitudes and assumptions that people …
Relational rights: A Vision for Law and Society Scholarship
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
The Exonerating 'Guise of Brotherhood: Intra-fraternal Sexual Violence Survivors' Accounts of Illegibility and Impunity
Greek life in American colleges and universities is characterized by white hetero-masculine dominance. A large scholarship has documented Greek life's association with women's sexual violence, yet much less is known about how men-who are ostensibly privileged in these settings-experience sexual harassment and assault. Using 15 interviews with fraternity members attending an elite, midwestern university, we examine men's experiences of intra-frate…
Situer la conscience du droit sur le harcèlement de rue
La conscience du droit des citoyens ordinaires face aux propos publics offensants et à leur régulation juridique est une question qui a fait l’objet de vifs débats, mais qui a été peu analysée par des études empiriques. À partir d’observations effectuées dans les espaces publics de trois collectivités du nord de la Californie et d’entretiens approfondis avec 100 sujets recrutés dans ces lieux, nous analysons, en fonction de la race et du genre, l…
The Right to Do Wrong: Morality and the Limits of Law
The Deserving Worker: Decisions about Workplace Accommodation by Judges and Laypeople
Employment civil rights laws require employers to make reasonable accommodations for certain workers so that they can perform their jobs. The “reasonableness” of an accommodation request should be based largely on the cost of the accommodation relative to the company's resources, but how do people really evaluate such requests? This study examines determinations of the reasonableness of workplace accommodation requests made by trial judges and or…
Rights on Trial: How Workplace Discrimination Law Perpetuates Inequality
Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Rights
Contents: Series preface Introduction Part I Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Theories of Rights: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations Of property, John Locke Constitutional democracy: a paradoxical union of contradictory principles?, JA rgen Habermas The model of rules, Ronald M. Dworkin. Part II Conflicts Of and About Rights: The new property, Charles A. Reich Rights in conflict, Jeremy Waldron Interpreting rights: …
Race and Determinations of Discrimination: Vigilance, Cynicism, Skepticism, and Attitudes about Legal Mobilization in Employment Civil Rights
What factors affect whether ordinary citizens believe that workplace decisions involving African-American employees rise to the level of discrimination? When do observers believe targets of possible race discrimination should consider mobilizing the law? We use a factorial design vignette study administered to a nationally representative sample of 2,087 ordinary people to address these questions. The "vigilance hypothesis" predicts that minoritie…
Public Interest Law Organizations and the Two-Tier System of Access to Justice in the United States
Public interest law organizations (PILOs) are important institutions for providing access to justice in the United States. How have political, economic, and institutional factors shaped PILOs? How do PILOs vary in the services they offer and in their geographical location relative to poverty and population in the United States? This article investigates these questions by combining original survey data from a representative sample of public inter…
Ahead of the Lawmen”: Law and Morality in Disney Animated Films 1960–1998
This article examines the relationship between law and morality in a selection of animated Disney movies released between 1960 and 1998. The authors analyze all of the fully-animated, G-rated movies that grossed $100 million or more (adjusted for inflation) which shaped the childhood of lawyers practicing today. We find that the predominant representation of the relationship between law and morality is that they are at odds. Law most often is por…
Funding the Cause: How Public Interest Law Organizations Fund Their Activities and Why It Matters for Social Change
Most of the work of public interest law organizations does not make money. How do these organizations survive, given the economic realities of law practice? Drawing on survey data from a national random sample of public interest law firms, we investigate how funding models vary across public interest organizations and how funding sources affect these organizations’ activities. We find funding structures have, over time, shifted away from foundati…
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 encou…
Mechanisms and Consequences of Professional Marginality: The Case of Poverty Lawyers Revisited
A partial replication of Jack Katz's (1982) Poor People's Lawyers in Transition , this article explores the manifestations and consequences of professional marginality of legal aid lawyers. Based on thirty-five interviews with poverty attorneys and interns in Chicago, the authors show that scarce material resources and unclear expectations continue to give rise to the marginalization of this segment of the legal profession. The authors analyzed i…
Siding with Science: In Defense of ASA’s Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Amicus Brief
qualitative research; research methods; law and social science; employment discrimination; scientific expert
License to Harass: Law, Hierarchy, and Offensive Public Speech
Offensive street speech--racist and sexist remarks that can make its targets feel both psychologically and physically threatened--is surprisingly common in our society. Many argue that this speech is so detestable that it should be banned under law. But is this an area covered by the First Amendment right to free speech? Or should it be banned? In this elegantly written book, Laura Beth Nielsen pursues the answers by probing the legal consciousne…
Handbook of Employment Discrimination Research: Rights and Realities
Divergent Paths: Conflicting Conceptions of Employment Discrimination in Law and the Social Sciences
Legal conceptions of employment discrimination have become increasingly narrow over the past two decades as the law has adopted a “perpetrator” model of discrimination that emphasizes purposeful intent. This tendency runs counter to social scientific research that documents the pervasiveness of unintentional bias and the persistence of organizational processes that generate workplace discrimination. This narrow legal conception, coupled with a sy…
Consent to Sex: The Liberal Paradigm Reformulated
Rights of Inclusion: Integrating Identity at the Bottom of the Dispute Pyramid
Introduction: A New Legal Realist Perspective on Employment Discrimination
Subtle, Pervasive, Harmful: Racist and Sexist Remarks in Public as Hate Speech
Using field observations and 100 in‐depth interviews with participants recruited from public places in Northern California, this article documents the experience of being the target of hate speech in public places. Focusing on racist and sexist hate speech (as participants define the phenomenon), I show that there is a range of experiences with hate speech and that it is often quite subtle, leaving all but intended victims unaware that it occurs.…
Representative Bureaucracy and Harder Questions: A Response to Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard
In an article in the November 1999 issue of this journal, Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard reach the tantalizing conclusion that increases in the representation of minority teachers in the public school bureaucracy actually enhance the academic achievement of both minority and Anglo groups of students. However, diagnostic and statistical tests on their data suggest that their analysis may suffer from specification, selection, and categorization limit…
Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment
The legal consciousness of ordinary citizens concerning offensive public speech is a phenomenon whose legal status has been vigorously debated, but which has received little empirical analysis. Drawing on observations in public spaces in three northern California communities and in-depth interviews with 100 subjects recruited from these public locations, I analyze variation across race and gender groups in experiences with offensive public speech…
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 encou…
Cops, Counsel, and Entrepreneurs: Constructing the Role of Inside Counsel in Large Corporations
Inside counsel to major corporations have accrued more power and status within the legal profession, but continue to struggle for influence and legitimacy within the corporation. In-depth interviews with lawyers and managers in large businesses reveal that inside counsel construct different professional roles for themselves depending on circumstances. We identify three ideal types of such roles: they act as cops (limiting their advice to legal ma…
Representative Bureaucracy and Harder Questions: A Response to Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard
In an article in the November 1999 issue of this journal, Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard reach the tantalizing conclusion that increases in the representation of minority teachers in the public school bureaucracy actually enhance the academic achievement of both minority and Anglo groups of students. However, diagnostic and statistical tests on their data suggest that their analysis may suffer from specification, selection, and categorization limit…
Race and Determinations of Discrimination: Vigilance, Cynicism, Skepticism, and Attitudes about Legal Mobilization in Employment Civil Rights
What factors affect whether ordinary citizens believe that workplace decisions involving African-American employees rise to the level of discrimination? When do observers believe targets of possible race discrimination should consider mobilizing the law? We use a factorial design vignette study administered to a nationally representative sample of 2,087 ordinary people to address these questions. The "vigilance hypothesis" predicts that minoritie…
Subtle, Pervasive, Harmful: Racist and Sexist Remarks in Public as Hate Speech
Using field observations and 100 in‐depth interviews with participants recruited from public places in Northern California, this article documents the experience of being the target of hate speech in public places. Focusing on racist and sexist hate speech (as participants define the phenomenon), I show that there is a range of experiences with hate speech and that it is often quite subtle, leaving all but intended victims unaware that it occurs.…
Relational rights: A Vision for Law and Society Scholarship
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Divergent Paths: Conflicting Conceptions of Employment Discrimination in Law and the Social Sciences
Legal conceptions of employment discrimination have become increasingly narrow over the past two decades as the law has adopted a “perpetrator” model of discrimination that emphasizes purposeful intent. This tendency runs counter to social scientific research that documents the pervasiveness of unintentional bias and the persistence of organizational processes that generate workplace discrimination. This narrow legal conception, coupled with a sy…
Public Interest Law Organizations and the Two-Tier System of Access to Justice in the United States
Public interest law organizations (PILOs) are important institutions for providing access to justice in the United States. How have political, economic, and institutional factors shaped PILOs? How do PILOs vary in the services they offer and in their geographical location relative to poverty and population in the United States? This article investigates these questions by combining original survey data from a representative sample of public inter…
Funding the Cause: How Public Interest Law Organizations Fund Their Activities and Why It Matters for Social Change
Most of the work of public interest law organizations does not make money. How do these organizations survive, given the economic realities of law practice? Drawing on survey data from a national random sample of public interest law firms, we investigate how funding models vary across public interest organizations and how funding sources affect these organizations’ activities. We find funding structures have, over time, shifted away from foundati…
Siding with Science: In Defense of ASA’s Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Amicus Brief
qualitative research; research methods; law and social science; employment discrimination; scientific expert
Mechanisms and Consequences of Professional Marginality: The Case of Poverty Lawyers Revisited
A partial replication of Jack Katz's (1982) Poor People's Lawyers in Transition , this article explores the manifestations and consequences of professional marginality of legal aid lawyers. Based on thirty-five interviews with poverty attorneys and interns in Chicago, the authors show that scarce material resources and unclear expectations continue to give rise to the marginalization of this segment of the legal profession. The authors analyzed i…
Rights of Inclusion: Integrating Identity at the Bottom of the Dispute Pyramid
Introduction: A New Legal Realist Perspective on Employment Discrimination
The Exonerating 'Guise of Brotherhood: Intra-fraternal Sexual Violence Survivors' Accounts of Illegibility and Impunity
Greek life in American colleges and universities is characterized by white hetero-masculine dominance. A large scholarship has documented Greek life's association with women's sexual violence, yet much less is known about how men-who are ostensibly privileged in these settings-experience sexual harassment and assault. Using 15 interviews with fraternity members attending an elite, midwestern university, we examine men's experiences of intra-frate…
The Deserving Worker: Decisions about Workplace Accommodation by Judges and Laypeople
Employment civil rights laws require employers to make reasonable accommodations for certain workers so that they can perform their jobs. The “reasonableness” of an accommodation request should be based largely on the cost of the accommodation relative to the company's resources, but how do people really evaluate such requests? This study examines determinations of the reasonableness of workplace accommodation requests made by trial judges and or…
Ahead of the Lawmen”: Law and Morality in Disney Animated Films 1960–1998
This article examines the relationship between law and morality in a selection of animated Disney movies released between 1960 and 1998. The authors analyze all of the fully-animated, G-rated movies that grossed $100 million or more (adjusted for inflation) which shaped the childhood of lawyers practicing today. We find that the predominant representation of the relationship between law and morality is that they are at odds. Law most often is por…
Consent to Sex: The Liberal Paradigm Reformulated
Paying Workers or Paying Lawyers: Employee Termination Practices in the United States and Canada
This article explores one multinational corporation’s employee termination practices in the United States and Canada. There are fairly insignificant differences in employees’ legal protections in the two countries and the company claims a uniform corporate employee termination process cross‐nationally. However, there are major structural and procedural differences in the employee termination process. The differences, including the way attorneys a…
Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Rights
Contents: Series preface Introduction Part I Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Theories of Rights: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations Of property, John Locke Constitutional democracy: a paradoxical union of contradictory principles?, JA rgen Habermas The model of rules, Ronald M. Dworkin. Part II Conflicts Of and About Rights: The new property, Charles A. Reich Rights in conflict, Jeremy Waldron Interpreting rights: …
Paying Workers or Paying Lawyers: Employee Termination Practices in the United States and Canada
This article explores one multinational corporation’s employee termination practices in the United States and Canada. There are fairly insignificant differences in employees’ legal protections in the two countries and the company claims a uniform corporate employee termination process cross‐nationally. However, there are major structural and procedural differences in the employee termination process. The differences, including the way attorneys a…
Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment
The legal consciousness of ordinary citizens concerning offensive public speech is a phenomenon whose legal status has been vigorously debated, but which has received little empirical analysis. Drawing on observations in public spaces in three northern California communities and in-depth interviews with 100 subjects recruited from these public locations, I analyze variation across race and gender groups in experiences with offensive public speech…
Cops, Counsel, and Entrepreneurs: Constructing the Role of Inside Counsel in Large Corporations
Inside counsel to major corporations have accrued more power and status within the legal profession, but continue to struggle for influence and legitimacy within the corporation. In-depth interviews with lawyers and managers in large businesses reveal that inside counsel construct different professional roles for themselves depending on circumstances. We identify three ideal types of such roles: they act as cops (limiting their advice to legal ma…
Representative Bureaucracy and Harder Questions: A Response to Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard
In an article in the November 1999 issue of this journal, Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard reach the tantalizing conclusion that increases in the representation of minority teachers in the public school bureaucracy actually enhance the academic achievement of both minority and Anglo groups of students. However, diagnostic and statistical tests on their data suggest that their analysis may suffer from specification, selection, and categorization limit…
Subtle, Pervasive, Harmful: Racist and Sexist Remarks in Public as Hate Speech
Using field observations and 100 in‐depth interviews with participants recruited from public places in Northern California, this article documents the experience of being the target of hate speech in public places. Focusing on racist and sexist hate speech (as participants define the phenomenon), I show that there is a range of experiences with hate speech and that it is often quite subtle, leaving all but intended victims unaware that it occurs.…
Introduction: A New Legal Realist Perspective on Employment Discrimination
Rights of Inclusion: Integrating Identity at the Bottom of the Dispute Pyramid
Handbook of Employment Discrimination Research: Rights and Realities
Divergent Paths: Conflicting Conceptions of Employment Discrimination in Law and the Social Sciences
Legal conceptions of employment discrimination have become increasingly narrow over the past two decades as the law has adopted a “perpetrator” model of discrimination that emphasizes purposeful intent. This tendency runs counter to social scientific research that documents the pervasiveness of unintentional bias and the persistence of organizational processes that generate workplace discrimination. This narrow legal conception, coupled with a sy…
Consent to Sex: The Liberal Paradigm Reformulated
License to Harass: Law, Hierarchy, and Offensive Public Speech
Offensive street speech--racist and sexist remarks that can make its targets feel both psychologically and physically threatened--is surprisingly common in our society. Many argue that this speech is so detestable that it should be banned under law. But is this an area covered by the First Amendment right to free speech? Or should it be banned? In this elegantly written book, Laura Beth Nielsen pursues the answers by probing the legal consciousne…
Mechanisms and Consequences of Professional Marginality: The Case of Poverty Lawyers Revisited
A partial replication of Jack Katz's (1982) Poor People's Lawyers in Transition , this article explores the manifestations and consequences of professional marginality of legal aid lawyers. Based on thirty-five interviews with poverty attorneys and interns in Chicago, the authors show that scarce material resources and unclear expectations continue to give rise to the marginalization of this segment of the legal profession. The authors analyzed i…
Siding with Science: In Defense of ASA’s Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Amicus Brief
qualitative research; research methods; law and social science; employment discrimination; scientific expert
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 encou…
Ahead of the Lawmen”: Law and Morality in Disney Animated Films 1960–1998
This article examines the relationship between law and morality in a selection of animated Disney movies released between 1960 and 1998. The authors analyze all of the fully-animated, G-rated movies that grossed $100 million or more (adjusted for inflation) which shaped the childhood of lawyers practicing today. We find that the predominant representation of the relationship between law and morality is that they are at odds. Law most often is por…
Funding the Cause: How Public Interest Law Organizations Fund Their Activities and Why It Matters for Social Change
Most of the work of public interest law organizations does not make money. How do these organizations survive, given the economic realities of law practice? Drawing on survey data from a national random sample of public interest law firms, we investigate how funding models vary across public interest organizations and how funding sources affect these organizations’ activities. We find funding structures have, over time, shifted away from foundati…
Public Interest Law Organizations and the Two-Tier System of Access to Justice in the United States
Public interest law organizations (PILOs) are important institutions for providing access to justice in the United States. How have political, economic, and institutional factors shaped PILOs? How do PILOs vary in the services they offer and in their geographical location relative to poverty and population in the United States? This article investigates these questions by combining original survey data from a representative sample of public inter…
Rights on Trial: How Workplace Discrimination Law Perpetuates Inequality
Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Rights
Contents: Series preface Introduction Part I Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Theories of Rights: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations Of property, John Locke Constitutional democracy: a paradoxical union of contradictory principles?, JA rgen Habermas The model of rules, Ronald M. Dworkin. Part II Conflicts Of and About Rights: The new property, Charles A. Reich Rights in conflict, Jeremy Waldron Interpreting rights: …
Race and Determinations of Discrimination: Vigilance, Cynicism, Skepticism, and Attitudes about Legal Mobilization in Employment Civil Rights
What factors affect whether ordinary citizens believe that workplace decisions involving African-American employees rise to the level of discrimination? When do observers believe targets of possible race discrimination should consider mobilizing the law? We use a factorial design vignette study administered to a nationally representative sample of 2,087 ordinary people to address these questions. The "vigilance hypothesis" predicts that minoritie…
The Deserving Worker: Decisions about Workplace Accommodation by Judges and Laypeople
Employment civil rights laws require employers to make reasonable accommodations for certain workers so that they can perform their jobs. The “reasonableness” of an accommodation request should be based largely on the cost of the accommodation relative to the company's resources, but how do people really evaluate such requests? This study examines determinations of the reasonableness of workplace accommodation requests made by trial judges and or…
The Right to Do Wrong: Morality and the Limits of Law
Situer la conscience du droit sur le harcèlement de rue
La conscience du droit des citoyens ordinaires face aux propos publics offensants et à leur régulation juridique est une question qui a fait l’objet de vifs débats, mais qui a été peu analysée par des études empiriques. À partir d’observations effectuées dans les espaces publics de trois collectivités du nord de la Californie et d’entretiens approfondis avec 100 sujets recrutés dans ces lieux, nous analysons, en fonction de la race et du genre, l…
The Exonerating 'Guise of Brotherhood: Intra-fraternal Sexual Violence Survivors' Accounts of Illegibility and Impunity
Greek life in American colleges and universities is characterized by white hetero-masculine dominance. A large scholarship has documented Greek life's association with women's sexual violence, yet much less is known about how men-who are ostensibly privileged in these settings-experience sexual harassment and assault. Using 15 interviews with fraternity members attending an elite, midwestern university, we examine men's experiences of intra-frate…
A Face-to-Face Approach to Preventing Campus Sexual Assault
Laura Beth Nielsen on balancing response with prevention efforts
Political science (23 works) · Law (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Law in Society and Culture (7 works) · Criminology (6 works) · Judicial and Constitutional Studies (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works)