Papers by Catherine Albiston
Social Science Research Network, Aug 1, 2018
Social Science Research Network, Oct 15, 2020
Now is a critical time to consider the role that lawyers—and the law schools that produce them—ca... more Now is a critical time to consider the role that lawyers—and the law schools that produce them—can play in movements for social transformation. Over the past half-century, public interest lawyers who represent subordinated communities in the pursuit of equal justice have contributed significantly to such movements: mobilizing law to fight discrimination, expand access to social benefits, promote the inclusion of immigrants and others branded outsiders, and protect the rights of low-wage workers and the unhoused. While some law schools have invested resources to train students seeking public interest careers, most continue to focus on placing students in lucrative law firms: elevating a neoliberal conception of legal education that seeks to maximize return on investment, rather than promoting the professional role of lawyers in democratic society. Even those law schools dedicated to helping students enter public interest careers lack basic information about which interventions are most likely to work. This Article fills that critical information gap by providing the first systematic empirical evidence about what law schools can do to help students build long-term public interest careers. Based on original data collected through a National Science Foundation-funded survey of a decade of graduates from six California law schools, this Article looks beyond the “drift” away from public interest work during law school to analyze the factors that promote what we call “public interest persistence,” or dedication to public interest work throughout one’s career. Using statistical techniques to evaluate the importance of endowment effects—what students bring to law school—and educational effects—what they experience there—we reveal the underappreciated ways that law schools do, in fact, matter in shaping public interest careers. In particular, we find that law schools play a crucial facilitative role: guiding students toward public interest careers through externships, summer jobs, and extracurricular activities that equip students with the tools they need to navigate the public interest job market and pursue social justice over the course of their professional lives. Based on these critical new findings, the Article offers policy recommendations for how law schools can build on current programs in support of public interest careers and urges rethinking what it means to practice public interest law—and advance broader demands for fundamental change—that respond to the urgency of the current crisis.
Routledge eBooks, May 15, 2017
The Family and Medical Leave Act requires employers to provide job-protected leave, but little is... more The Family and Medical Leave Act requires employers to provide job-protected leave, but little is known about how these leave rights operate in practice or how they interact with other normative systems to construct the meaning of leave. Drawing on interviews with workers who negotiated contested leaves, this study examines how social institutions influence workplace mobilization of these rights. I find that leave rights remain embedded within institutionalized conceptions of work, gender, and disability that shape workers' perceptions, preferences, and choices about mobilizing their rights. I also find, however, that workers can draw on law as a Ctilture discourse to challenge these assumptions, to build coalitions, and to renegotiate the meaning of leave. Until recently, the United States was virtually the only major industrialized country without a family leave policy. Employers could legally fire workers who needed time off to care for seriously ill children, ill or injured spouses, or aging and dying parents. Employers could also legally fire workers unable to work due to temporary serious illnesses or injuries. And employers could legally fire women who needed time off for pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions so long as they also denied time off to nonpregnant employees who were unable to work. Time off after the birth of a child remained a benefit provided at employers' discretion, a benefit primarily available to well-paid professional or management workers (Kamerman, Kahn, & Kingston 1983).
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jul 26, 2010
Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security|Cutting Child Care Out from Under Californi... more Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security|Cutting Child Care Out from Under Californians EXECUTIVE SUMMARY he California budget battle is continuing with no clear end in sight. To help patch a nearly $20 billion shortfall in California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed to cut $1.2 billion in child care funds, a move that would eliminate most subsidized child care for low-income families. He also proposed to terminate California's welfare program, CalWORKs, which serves 1.4 million people, 1.1 million of whom are children. Included in the CalWORKs cuts are child care subsidies for families receiving or successfully transitioned off welfare. In total, 240,000 children would lose access to subsidized child care. While the Legislature's Joint Budget Conference Committee rejected these child care cuts, the continued uncertainty about child care funding undermines the availability and sustainability of child care as districts are forced to close their programs because the state budget remains unresolved. This paper outlines the impact these child care cuts would have on working parents, children, and the state's economy.
Retour page d'accueil Chercher, sur, Tous les supports. Retour page d'accueil, Plus de ... more Retour page d'accueil Chercher, sur, Tous les supports. Retour page d'accueil, Plus de 1.616.000 de titres à notre catalogue ! Notice. 64.79 Ajouter au panier. Institutional ...
New York University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
Law and Social Inquiry-journal of The American Bar Foundation, Apr 18, 2023
The New Civil Rights Research, 2019
Reviewed by Catherine Albiston I. Introduction Public Interest Lawyering results from a decade-lo... more Reviewed by Catherine Albiston I. Introduction Public Interest Lawyering results from a decade-long effort by Alan K. Chen and Scott Cummings, two former public interest lawyers. The authors go beyond poverty practice and social justice litigation to evaluate public interest lawyering as a field of scholarly inquiry. Their book maps a mature field of study built on normative and empirical scholarship about the legal profession's relationship to the public interest and social change. This volume will be a tremendous resource for those who teach and write in this area for years to come. There is so much to admire it is difficult to know where to begin. Addressing all of the book's virtues would be an impossible task. Instead, I focus on three things the authors do especially well: defining public interest law, evaluating the pro bono contributions of the private bar, and canvassing the rich empirical research in the field. These particular virtues distinguish the book from its predecessors and contribute to its worth as a research tool and teaching resource. I close with thoughts evoked by the book about modes of public interest lawyering into the future. II. Three Virtues of This Volume A. Care in Defining Public Interest law The book opens by taking on the most difficult question in the field: defining public interest lawyering (5-32), a task that as often as not provokes heated debate about the practical and normative boundaries of the field. 1 1.
Labor: Public Policy & Regulation eJournal, 2010
Employment discrimination statutes generally treat inequality as the product of discriminatory an... more Employment discrimination statutes generally treat inequality as the product of discriminatory animus, but this approach undertheorizes how institutions construct identities and generate inequality. Drawing on neoinstitutionalist theories in sociology, this Article develops a theory of institutional inequality that focuses on how institutions give rise to inequality by reproducing the social patterns and belief systems that existed at the time they emerged. To develop this theory, the Article examines why workplace time standards that disadvantage pregnant women have remained resistant to reform through Title VII and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Historical genealogy shows that workplace time standards embody cultural conceptions of gender and work that developed during the transition to modern capitalist production. Courts rely on these institutionalized conceptions of work and gender to interpret antidiscrimination statutes narrowly, reinforcing an oppositional relationship be...
CATHERINE ALBISTON* Introduction ................................................................... more CATHERINE ALBISTON* Introduction ................................................................... 187 I.Theories of Democracy and Civil Society. ............................. 190 II.Public Interest Law Organizations as Civil Society Organizations. ........................................................ 194 A. How do PILOs Give Voice to Citizen Interests and Encourage Civic Engagement? ................................ 197 B. To What Extent do PILOs Attract Media Coverage to Issues Affecting Marginalized Constituencies? ............. 199 C. To What Extent are PILOs a Counterweight to the State and Other Powerful Interests? ................................. 207 Conclusion ..................................................................... 211
Law <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&amp;"/> Society Review, 2005
The Family and Medical Leave Act requires employers to provide job-protected leave, but little is... more The Family and Medical Leave Act requires employers to provide job-protected leave, but little is known about how these leave rights operate in practice or how they interact with other normative systems to construct the meaning of leave. Drawing on interviews with workers who negotiated contested leaves, this study examines how social institutions influence workplace mobilization of these rights. I find that leave rights remain embedded within institutionalized conceptions of work, gender, and disability that shape workers' perceptions, preferences, and choices about mobilizing their rights. I also find, however, that workers can draw on law as a Ctilture discourse to challenge these assumptions, to build coalitions, and to renegotiate the meaning of leave. Until recently, the United States was virtually the only major industrialized country without a family leave policy. Employers could legally fire workers who needed time off to care for seriously ill children, ill or injured spouses, or aging and dying parents. Employers could also legally fire workers unable to work due to temporary serious illnesses or injuries. And employers could legally fire women who needed time off for pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions so long as they also denied time off to nonpregnant employees who were unable to work. Time off after the birth of a child remained a benefit provided at employers' discretion, a benefit primarily available to well-paid professional or management workers (Kamerman, Kahn, & Kingston 1983).
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Papers by Catherine Albiston