Muriel Clair
Biographic Data
| ID | 674000 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Muriel Clair |
| GIVEN NAMES | Muriel |
| FAMILY NAME | Clair |
| SIGNATURE | CLAIR M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7462-0649 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 259 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Gendered expectations of future work-family conflict in the legal profession
The Cultural Study of Law and Social Crisis
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, frame…
A Relational Theory of Inequality in the Criminal Legal System
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 …
Courthouse funneling: How organizational mechanisms teach tenants to bargain in eviction court
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 r…
Spatial Burdens of State Institutions: The Case of Criminal Courthouses
Moral reconciling at career launch: Politics, Race, and Occupational Choice
Recent research suggests that college-educated young adults, especially those who are politically liberal and/or racially marginalized, exhibit moral reservations about their intended occupations. How do they justify entering occupations that conflict with their morals, and with what consequences? This article examines the case of 74 mostly liberal prospective law school students from a range of racial backgrounds followed over 2 years. In interv…
The roughest form of social work: ” How court officials justify bail decisions
Growing research has analyzed quantitative patterns of bail decisions and outcomes, but we know far less about how court officials justify their bail decisions. To enhance understanding of how bail decisions—and their resulting pretrial outcomes—are generated, we interviewed 104 judges, prosecutors, and public defenders in a northeastern state. Court officials in our study reported three primary justifications at bail: ensuring defendants return …
Black Sociology in the Era of Black Lives Matter
In 1973, on the heels of the hard-fought gains of the Civil Rights Movement, sociologist and civil rights activist Joyce A. Ladner edited a collection titled The Death of White Sociology: Essays on Race and Culture. Bringing together an impressive set of Black writers and academics, the essays sought to make “an early statement on the development of Black sociology [...and] to examine some of the historical forces which have acted upon Black soci…
Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal
The collateral consequences of criminal legal association during jury selection
How does a potential juror's association with the criminal legal system matter during jury selection? Growing scholarship examines statutory exclusions of people with felony convictions, sometimes characterizing felon-juror exclusion as a collateral consequence of mass incarceration. Less research has considered whether court officials seek to exclude potential jurors based on lower-level forms of contact or perceived association. We draw on inte…
Criminalized Subjectivity: Du Boisian Sociology and Visions for Legal Change
Over the period of mass criminalization, social scientists have developed rigorous theories concerning the perspectives and struggles of people and communities subject to criminal legal control. While this scholarship has long noted differences across racial groups, it has yet to fully examine how racism and criminalization interrelate in the making of criminalized people’s perspectives and their visions for transforming the legal system. This ar…
Being a Disadvantaged Criminal Defendant: Mistrust and Resistance in Attorney-Client Interactions
Researchers have documented the power of legal officials to administer sanctions, from arrest to court surveillance and incarceration. How do those subject to punishment interact with officials and attempt to subvert their power? Drawing on interviews and ethnographic observations among 63 criminal defendants and 42 legal officials in the Boston-area court system, this article considers how socioeconomically and racially disadvantaged defendants …
Black Intellectuals and White Audiences
Racism
The study of racism in sociology entails an examination of the social construction of “racial” groups and racial inequalities. Defined as an ideology of racial group superiority that justifies or prescribes a system of racial domination or exploitation, racism is perpetuated by the beliefs and behaviors of individuals and by the institutions in which they are embedded. In the post‐civil rights period, many scholars have focused on the shift from …
Racialized legal status as a social determinant of health
Jurors' Subjective Experiences of Deliberations in Criminal Cases
Research on jury deliberations has largely focused on the implications of deliberations for criminal defendants' outcomes. In contrast, this article considers jurors' outcomes by integrating subjective experience into the study of deliberations. We examine whether jurors' feelings that they had enough time to express themselves vary by jurors' gender, race, or education. Drawing on status characteristics theory and a survey of more than 3,000 rea…
Chapter 2. The University as a Living Laboratory for Climate Solutions
The story of the University of California’s institutional goal of de-carbonization by 2025, already years in the making, was a key feature of a systemwide Summit on carbon neutrality and climate mitigation in the Fall of 2015. This report, commissioned by the Summit, represents a unique multi-campus, interdisciplinary collaboration, an attempt by one university system to harness its diverse intellectual resources to address the crisis of global c…
How Judges Think About Racial Disparities: Situational Decision‐making in the Criminal Justice System
Researchers have theorized how judges’ decision‐making may result in the disproportionate presence of Blacks and Latinos in the criminal justice system. Yet, we have little evidence about how judges make sense of these disparities and what, if anything, they do to address them. By drawing on 59 interviews with state judges in a Northeastern state, we describe, and trace the implications of, judges’ understandings of racial disparities at arraignm…
Destigmatization and health: Cultural constructions and the long-term reduction of stigma
Racism, Sociology of
Seeing These Good Souls Adore God in the Midst of the Woods
Up to 1647, Jesuit missionaries in New France attempting to evangelize nomadic Algonquians of North America's subarctic region were unable to follow these peoples, as they wished, in their seasonal hunts. The mission sources, especially the early Jesuit Relations , indicate that it was Algonquian neophytes of the Jesuit mission villages of Sillery and La Conception who themselves attracted other natives to Christianity. A veritable Native America…
Une chapelle en guise de maison: Notre-Dame de Lorette en Nouvelle-France. Dévotions et iconographie
Article L.111-1 du Code de la proprit intellectuelle
Entre vision et audition: La lumière dans les missions iroquoises du 17e siècle
Ce texte se propose de livrer une enquête historique sur les cultures sensorielles dans les missions iroquoises du 17esiècle afin d'évaluer le rôle que la lumière, comme matière et comme symbole, a joué dans la rencontre des mondes iroquois et jésuite. L'analyse respective des relations entre la vue et l'audition dans ces cultures permet de mieux comprendre la promotion des matériaux brillants en contexte missionnaire. Alors que les jésuites oppo…
Racialized legal status as a social determinant of health
Destigmatization and health: Cultural constructions and the long-term reduction of stigma
How Judges Think About Racial Disparities: Situational Decision‐making in the Criminal Justice System
Researchers have theorized how judges’ decision‐making may result in the disproportionate presence of Blacks and Latinos in the criminal justice system. Yet, we have little evidence about how judges make sense of these disparities and what, if anything, they do to address them. By drawing on 59 interviews with state judges in a Northeastern state, we describe, and trace the implications of, judges’ understandings of racial disparities at arraignm…
The roughest form of social work: ” How court officials justify bail decisions
Growing research has analyzed quantitative patterns of bail decisions and outcomes, but we know far less about how court officials justify their bail decisions. To enhance understanding of how bail decisions—and their resulting pretrial outcomes—are generated, we interviewed 104 judges, prosecutors, and public defenders in a northeastern state. Court officials in our study reported three primary justifications at bail: ensuring defendants return …
Jurors' Subjective Experiences of Deliberations in Criminal Cases
Research on jury deliberations has largely focused on the implications of deliberations for criminal defendants' outcomes. In contrast, this article considers jurors' outcomes by integrating subjective experience into the study of deliberations. We examine whether jurors' feelings that they had enough time to express themselves vary by jurors' gender, race, or education. Drawing on status characteristics theory and a survey of more than 3,000 rea…
The collateral consequences of criminal legal association during jury selection
How does a potential juror's association with the criminal legal system matter during jury selection? Growing scholarship examines statutory exclusions of people with felony convictions, sometimes characterizing felon-juror exclusion as a collateral consequence of mass incarceration. Less research has considered whether court officials seek to exclude potential jurors based on lower-level forms of contact or perceived association. We draw on inte…
Moral reconciling at career launch: Politics, Race, and Occupational Choice
Recent research suggests that college-educated young adults, especially those who are politically liberal and/or racially marginalized, exhibit moral reservations about their intended occupations. How do they justify entering occupations that conflict with their morals, and with what consequences? This article examines the case of 74 mostly liberal prospective law school students from a range of racial backgrounds followed over 2 years. In interv…
Entre vision et audition: La lumière dans les missions iroquoises du 17e siècle
Ce texte se propose de livrer une enquête historique sur les cultures sensorielles dans les missions iroquoises du 17esiècle afin d'évaluer le rôle que la lumière, comme matière et comme symbole, a joué dans la rencontre des mondes iroquois et jésuite. L'analyse respective des relations entre la vue et l'audition dans ces cultures permet de mieux comprendre la promotion des matériaux brillants en contexte missionnaire. Alors que les jésuites oppo…
Une chapelle en guise de maison: Notre-Dame de Lorette en Nouvelle-France. Dévotions et iconographie
Article L.111-1 du Code de la proprit intellectuelle
Seeing These Good Souls Adore God in the Midst of the Woods
Up to 1647, Jesuit missionaries in New France attempting to evangelize nomadic Algonquians of North America's subarctic region were unable to follow these peoples, as they wished, in their seasonal hunts. The mission sources, especially the early Jesuit Relations , indicate that it was Algonquian neophytes of the Jesuit mission villages of Sillery and La Conception who themselves attracted other natives to Christianity. A veritable Native America…
Racism, Sociology of
Chapter 2. The University as a Living Laboratory for Climate Solutions
The story of the University of California’s institutional goal of de-carbonization by 2025, already years in the making, was a key feature of a systemwide Summit on carbon neutrality and climate mitigation in the Fall of 2015. This report, commissioned by the Summit, represents a unique multi-campus, interdisciplinary collaboration, an attempt by one university system to harness its diverse intellectual resources to address the crisis of global c…
How Judges Think About Racial Disparities: Situational Decision‐making in the Criminal Justice System
Researchers have theorized how judges’ decision‐making may result in the disproportionate presence of Blacks and Latinos in the criminal justice system. Yet, we have little evidence about how judges make sense of these disparities and what, if anything, they do to address them. By drawing on 59 interviews with state judges in a Northeastern state, we describe, and trace the implications of, judges’ understandings of racial disparities at arraignm…
Destigmatization and health: Cultural constructions and the long-term reduction of stigma
Jurors' Subjective Experiences of Deliberations in Criminal Cases
Research on jury deliberations has largely focused on the implications of deliberations for criminal defendants' outcomes. In contrast, this article considers jurors' outcomes by integrating subjective experience into the study of deliberations. We examine whether jurors' feelings that they had enough time to express themselves vary by jurors' gender, race, or education. Drawing on status characteristics theory and a survey of more than 3,000 rea…
Racialized legal status as a social determinant of health
Black Intellectuals and White Audiences
Racism
The study of racism in sociology entails an examination of the social construction of “racial” groups and racial inequalities. Defined as an ideology of racial group superiority that justifies or prescribes a system of racial domination or exploitation, racism is perpetuated by the beliefs and behaviors of individuals and by the institutions in which they are embedded. In the post‐civil rights period, many scholars have focused on the shift from …
Being a Disadvantaged Criminal Defendant: Mistrust and Resistance in Attorney-Client Interactions
Researchers have documented the power of legal officials to administer sanctions, from arrest to court surveillance and incarceration. How do those subject to punishment interact with officials and attempt to subvert their power? Drawing on interviews and ethnographic observations among 63 criminal defendants and 42 legal officials in the Boston-area court system, this article considers how socioeconomically and racially disadvantaged defendants …
Criminalized Subjectivity: Du Boisian Sociology and Visions for Legal Change
Over the period of mass criminalization, social scientists have developed rigorous theories concerning the perspectives and struggles of people and communities subject to criminal legal control. While this scholarship has long noted differences across racial groups, it has yet to fully examine how racism and criminalization interrelate in the making of criminalized people’s perspectives and their visions for transforming the legal system. This ar…
Black Sociology in the Era of Black Lives Matter
In 1973, on the heels of the hard-fought gains of the Civil Rights Movement, sociologist and civil rights activist Joyce A. Ladner edited a collection titled The Death of White Sociology: Essays on Race and Culture. Bringing together an impressive set of Black writers and academics, the essays sought to make “an early statement on the development of Black sociology [...and] to examine some of the historical forces which have acted upon Black soci…
Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal
The collateral consequences of criminal legal association during jury selection
How does a potential juror's association with the criminal legal system matter during jury selection? Growing scholarship examines statutory exclusions of people with felony convictions, sometimes characterizing felon-juror exclusion as a collateral consequence of mass incarceration. Less research has considered whether court officials seek to exclude potential jurors based on lower-level forms of contact or perceived association. We draw on inte…
The roughest form of social work: ” How court officials justify bail decisions
Growing research has analyzed quantitative patterns of bail decisions and outcomes, but we know far less about how court officials justify their bail decisions. To enhance understanding of how bail decisions—and their resulting pretrial outcomes—are generated, we interviewed 104 judges, prosecutors, and public defenders in a northeastern state. Court officials in our study reported three primary justifications at bail: ensuring defendants return …
Spatial Burdens of State Institutions: The Case of Criminal Courthouses
Moral reconciling at career launch: Politics, Race, and Occupational Choice
Recent research suggests that college-educated young adults, especially those who are politically liberal and/or racially marginalized, exhibit moral reservations about their intended occupations. How do they justify entering occupations that conflict with their morals, and with what consequences? This article examines the case of 74 mostly liberal prospective law school students from a range of racial backgrounds followed over 2 years. In interv…
Gendered expectations of future work-family conflict in the legal profession
The Cultural Study of Law and Social Crisis
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, frame…
A Relational Theory of Inequality in the Criminal Legal System
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 …
Courthouse funneling: How organizational mechanisms teach tenants to bargain in eviction court
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 r…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (8 works) · Criminology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Criminal justice (6 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (5 works)