Historical change in an elite profession—Class origins and grades among law graduates over 200 years

Hansen, Marianne; Strømme, Thea Bertnes

doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12852

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…3 Some variations in the size of the student body are also shown in Figure 1. Reductions in the number of law graduates occurred around World War I (WWI) and in the early 2000s, and professional closure strategies were enforced during both periods to tackle economic hardship and increased competition in the labor market (Espeli et al, 2008;Hansen & Strømme, 2021). The earlier growth in the number of graduates in combination with an economic depression dampened demand for legal services during WWI.…”

Section: Educational Expansion and The Feminization Of Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The closure strategies included lobbying for policies to restrict access to legal work from other professional groups in the 1930s and implementing numerus clausus in the 1980s and the 1990s to limit the number of students entering law. In the years that followed, the law once again constituted an elite field of study with both strict entry requirements and high incomes in the labor market (Hansen & Strømme, 2021).…”

Section: Educational Expansion and The Feminization Of Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nation‐builders and market architects: How social origins mold the careers of law graduates over 200 years in Norway

Toft

2023

British Journal of Sociology

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This paper examines the types of work that jurists have historically undertaken and maps how opportunities for legal practice have been shaped by social origins across three centuries: after constitutional independence in the mid‐1800s, during industrial capitalism in the mid‐1900s, and at present‐day advanced capitalism. I analyze historical archive data on law graduates from the 19th and 20th centuries in combination with administrative registry data from the 1990s onwards and employ correspondence analysis to explore how social backgrounds shape careers, considering transformations in class structures and the changing significance of juridical expertise over time. Within each period, jurists have served in very different roles including those that craft and cater to the institutional make‐up of the state and the markets. My analysis shows that the impact of social origin on occupational outcomes has undergone significant changes, mirroring shifts in the broader social structure; from the importance of legal and political capital (within regional jurisdictions) in the 19th century to the significance of economic capital as the main structuring principle, but also a greater significance of cultural capital, in contemporary times. The ability to reach the most powerful positions among law graduates—within the polity in the 19th century, and the economy in the 21st century—has been differently structured by origins. I argue that expansion of the student body, the declining standing of the university, and heightened differentiation of the social structure and the juridical field have made intimate familiarity with the business world pivotal for forging mutually beneficial alliances between jurists and the increasingly dominant capitalist class. Today, a select group of jurists have managed to connect with and contribute to the rising power of private capital. Thus, the historical tale of jurists cannot be accurately captured by notions of uniform descent from national power structures.

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Section: Educational Expansion and The Feminization Of Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Educational Expansion and The Feminization Of Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nation‐builders and market architects: How social origins mold the careers of law graduates over 200 years in Norway

Toft

2023

British Journal of Sociology

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“…This study adds to this literature a focus on relations between elite groups, which maps changing dynamics in elite composition over more than a century. Our data do not have the granularity to focus on gradual year‐to‐year century long changes as recent studies of the 1% share of the income distribution (Alvaredo et al, 2013 ), class origins and educational achievements (Hansen & Strømme, 2021 ), elite schooling (Reeves et al, 2017 ) or elite cultural tastes (Friedman & Reeves, 2020 ), but allow us, for the first time, to analyze how relations between elite groups change, and how the composition of a cross‐sectoral elite defined dynamically through elite networks evolve. We add to the discussions on how changes in elite composition are related to political developments, not least the evolving relations between the capitalist class and state and union powers (Mizruchi, 2013 ).…”

Section: Background: Studying Elites Over Timementioning

confidence: 99%

From integrated to fragmented elites. The core of Swiss elite networks 1910–2015

Rossier

Ellersgaard

Larsen

et al. 2022

British Journal of Sociology

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This article focuses on historical elite dynamics and investigates elites' integration over time. We describe the changing relations and composition of the central circles in Swiss elite networks at seven benchmark years between 1910 and 2015 by relying on 22,262 elite individuals tied to 2587 organizations among eight key sectors, and identify for each year the most connected core of individuals. We explore network cohesion and sectoral bridging of the elite core and find that it moved from being a unitary corporate elite, before 1945, to an integrated corporatist elite, between the 1950s and 1980s, before fragmenting into a loose group, with an increased importance of corporate elites, in the 1990s onwards. The core was always dominated by business and their forms of legitimacy but, at times of crisis to the hegemony of corporate elites, after the Second World War and (only) shortly after the 2008 financial crisis, elite circles expanded and included individuals with delegated forms of power, such as politicians and unionists. In the most recent cohort (2015), the share of corporate elites in the core is similar to the one before the First World War and during the interwar period. This return to the past echoes findings on wealth inequality and economic capital accumulation by a small group of individuals organized around the most powerful companies.

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“…By analysing and comparing these three narratives, we hope to gain insight into how class and socio-economic background were intertwined in how children with disabilities experienced education and social welfare during the pandemic. Such a perspective is important because a growing body of evidence suggests that differences in socio-economic background have increased in Norway (Hansen & Strømme, 2021;Hansen & Toft, 2021) and across the Nordic countries (Jonsson, 2004) in recent decades. In addition, new flows of migration and increased globalisation have placed Oslo among the fastest-growing cities in Europe, with an immigration rate which has increased from under 10 percent of the population in the 1990s to over 33 percent today.…”

Section: Characteristics Of Key Informants Sampling Criteria and Anal...mentioning

confidence: 99%

How Did Children With Disabilities Experience Education and Social Welfare During Covid-19?

Bøhler

Bossy²,

Hervie

2022

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Research suggests that children with disabilities have been systemically marginalised during the Covid-19 pandemic as contamination measures complicated some social policies. School closure, quarantine, and the increased use of social media in remote schooling have placed children with disabilities in a vulnerable situation. This article explores the subjective consequences of such processes through the analysis of qualitative interviews with parents who had children with disabilities. To contextualise our analysis, we also draw on expert interviews with bureaucrats and social workers and data from a survey that was sent out to parents who had children with disabilities. Taken together, these data sources provide a rich empirical context to study how the pandemic influenced the access of children with disabilities to education and social services in Norway. We also pay attention to how the pandemic influenced parents’ perception of social welfare in Norway and discuss how issues of race, class, and socio-economic background were reflected in their experiences. Both interview data and survey data were gathered during the pandemic. Conceptually we take inspiration from the capability approach with a particular focus on theoretical work on “conversion factors.” These theoretical perspectives invite us to identify and analyse specific mechanisms that prevented and/or enabled children with disabilities to live a life according to their own visions and values during the pandemic. Through this study of how children with disabilities experienced education and social welfare in Norway during the pandemic, we shed new light on how one of the world’s most advanced welfare states operates during a time of crisis.

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Historical change in an elite profession—Class origins and grades among law graduates over 200 years

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Cited by 9 publications

References 38 publications

Nation‐builders and market architects: How social origins mold the careers of law graduates over 200 years in Norway

Nation‐builders and market architects: How social origins mold the careers of law graduates over 200 years in Norway

From integrated to fragmented elites. The core of Swiss elite networks 1910–2015

How Did Children With Disabilities Experience Education and Social Welfare During Covid-19?

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