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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Had a wonderful time engaging with several colleagues about ideas related to this article at LSA’s @lawandsociety.bsky.social annual meeting a couple weeks ago in San Francisco!

Panelists at the LSA conference looking toward the audience. From L to R: Marisa Omori, Michelle Phelps, John Halushka, Mona Lynch, and Javier Wilenmann

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Starting today, I’m a tenured professor at Stanford. I’m thrilled and grateful to my generous mentors and brilliant students. www.linkedin.com/posts/matthe...

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

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Here’s the article’s abstract: compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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.

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

How do eviction courts funnel tenants into settlements with landlords that often reproduce housing insecurity? Check out our new article in LSR on the organizational mechanisms that compel settlements in a California eviction court. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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.

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

A revised version of this paper is forthcoming in Annual Review of Law and Social Science. The article shows how culture constitutes and shapes law and social crisis. The best thing about writing this was the chance to read brilliant work on law, culture, and unsettled times osf.io/preprints/so...

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.

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

A great funding opportunity for ABD graduate students in the social sciences and humanities whose research is focused on social justice. cescholar.org

Flyer “calling all scholar-activists” to apply for fellowships with the Center for Engaged Scholarship. Application period is between October 1-December 1.

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Law is central to today’s social crises—from democratic backsliding to immigrant exclusion. This paper shows how cultural sociology offers rigorous explanations of, and insights into how to tackle, law-related crises. Hope it’s useful to law and society scholars and others osf.io/preprints/so...

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.

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Hundreds gathered today outside the Palo Alto Courthouse in support of 12 Stanford students being prosecuted by the Santa Clara County DA for their involvement in a pro-Palestinian protest and occupation of the president’s office last year.

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Where is research on the legal profession and legal education headed in this moment of crisis? Check out this American Bar Foundation/Stanford Law School report for some ideas. @abfresearch.bsky.social www.americanbarfoundation.org/wp-content/u...

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Just received my copy of Mary Ellen Stitt’s empirically rigorous new book on the failures of court-mandated diversionary treatment programs. An important addition to research on courts and legal reform. Grab a copy! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

We hope others find this work useful. If so, check out other research and resources available at the Court Listening Project: www.courtlisteningproject.org

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

New article theorizing the “spatial burdens” of state institutions. Drawing on 125 interviews and over 400 hours of observations among court-involved people in the Bay Area, we show how space shapes poverty governance and institutional inequality. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

#TeslaTakedown in Palo Alto, the center of Silicon Valley—and of our current techno-fascist nightmare.

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

A report summarizing our systems navigator pilot in a public defender’s office in San Jose. We offer recommendations for the county and other public defense agencies across the country. osf.io/preprints/so...

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Matthew Clair @mathuclair.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

A student at MassArt, Owen Schwartz, made these comics to illustrate the book’s key arguments. Shout-out to Caroline Hu’s (@hudrewthis.bsky.social) amazing Science Comics Collaboration course.

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