Legal Mobilization in Schools: The Paradox of Rights and Race Among Youth

Abstract

In this article, we analyze ethnoracial patterns in youth perceptions and responses to rights violations and advance a new model of legal mobilization that includes formal, quasi-, and extralegal action. Slightly more than half of the 5,461 students in our sample reported past rights violations involving discrimination, harassment, freedom of expression/assembly, and due process violations in disciplinary procedures. Students, regardless of race, are more likely to take extralegal than formal legal actions in response to perceived rights violations. Self-identified African American and Latino/a students are significantly more likely than white and Asian American students to perceive rights violations and are more likely to claim they would take formal legal action in response to hypothetical rights violations. However, when they perceive rights violations, African American and Asian American students are no more likely than whites to take formal legal action and Latino/a students are less likely than whites to take formal legal action. We draw on in-depth interviews with youth and adults—which we interlace with our quantitative findings—to explore the interpretive dynamics underlying these survey findings, and we offer several theoretical and methodological implications of our work.

The More You Talk, the Worse It Is

“…This is especially important as the law is often more complex, contradictory, and ambiguous than a simple reading of the law on the books would indicate, as case law is interpreted by various social actors (from Supreme Court justices to the various institutional and individual actors to whom it applies). Especially where law is ambiguous, there is great room for divergent perceptions, with reinterpretations (Edelman 1992) and translations of law (Morrill et al 2010) frequently giving rise to myths and exaggerations about law and legal rights (Edelman, Abraham, and Erlanger 1992;Galanter 1983).…”

Experiences of Discrimination in an Emerging Latina/o Community

“…), but socially disadvantaged individuals are less likely to make such claims (Blackstone, Uggen, and McLaughlin ; Engel and Munger ; Gilliom ; Kidder ; Morrill et al. ). This disparity is driven by a number of social, cultural, and structural factors such as fear of adverse consequences (Bumiller ; Gleeson ; Sáenz et al.…”

In-services and empty threats: The roles of organizational practices and workplace experiences in shaping U.S. educators’ understandings of students’ rights

“…More recently, however, research has explored these issues in relation to students' legal entitlements in American schools (Arum, 2003;Schimmel and Militello, 2007;Davies, 2009;Militello et al, 2009;Morrill et al, 2010;Bracy, 2010). Findings show that teachers and administrators hold limited knowledge of students' rights, despite citing the availability of due process for students facing disciplinary action as a leading legal concern that impacts their day-to-day decisions on the job (Militello and Schimmel, 2008;Militello et al, 2009).…”

“…As discussed in Morrill et al (2010), each of the three states in our local data were carefully 10 It is important to note that facing a legal action for a school-related matter, having one's rights violated, or the participation in a district grievance procedure do not necessarily mean that the lawsuit or grievance pertained to the inappropriate discipline of a student. In contrast, our variable for attending a district or diocese in-service training program on students' rights measures an organizational practice directly related to informing educators on the rights students hold.…”

“…Each of the interviews lasted between 30 min and 2 h. The structure of each interview provided the opportunity for educators to provide impressions on the social organization and student body of their school; note personal characteristics and employment history; explain any school-related disputes which may have occurred; and offer perceptions on formal school rules and the rights held by students. SRP interviewers structured each session to combine open-ended with semi-structured interview techniques used effectively in previous studies of informal disputing in organizations (e.g., Morrill, 1995) and legal consciousness (e.g., Ewick and Silbey, 1998), while focusing explicitly on school rules and students' rights (Morrill et al, 2010). Researchers coded the transcripts in ATLAS.ti in order to facilitate detecting themes and quotes representative of teachers and administrators interviewed across all the sites.…”