The poor pay more than the non-poor for many consumer products, and this disparity seems to be ignored by such consumer protection regulation as disclosure laws. Indeed, several lines of argument suggest that the poor will not benefit from disclosure regulation either because they lack the ability to use information effectively (“market irrationality”) or because they are restricted to particularly flawed markets and products (“separate markets/products”).

This paper examines income stratification in the used car markets in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. We found that the poor did pay more for used cars, got less redress for defects discovered after purchase, and were less satisfied and more likely to believe something was misrepresented. Differences in product quality did not account for these results because the patterns persisted even after the model, age, and price of the purchased vehicles were held constant. Further, no evidence was found for “market irrationality” among the poor. No income differences were seen in buyers' discovery of defects before or after purchase, and low-income buyers complained at higher rates, albeit with less success, than did higher-income buyers. Furthermore, the adoption of disclosure regulation in Wisconsin did not increase or decrease price discrimination against the poor. These findings point to the need for more research on the causes of price discrimination and more attention to the problems of the poor in the design and implementation of consumer protection regulations.

Empirical tests of Durkheim's legal theories can neither confirm nor refute their central hypotheses. Rather than serving to substantiate or refute theoretical propositions, empirical evidence is best conceptualized as providing for the specification and elaboration of a research program. In the case of Durkheim's legal theories, the programmatic effort is to use social science to help resolve the major social, moral, and legal tensions characteristic of modern society. In this light, Durkheim's legal theories are viewed as comparative and contextual, containing insights into the relationship between law and the social constitution of morality.

Theories about law have focused upon: 1) law's integrative function in society, 2) its role in maintaining dominant group ascendancy, and 3) its utilization by subordinate groups as a “jurisprudence of insurgency.” It is argued here that these three functions of law intermingle in distinctive fashion from society to society, in part because of the different perceptions of law that dominant and subordinate groups hold. Vying subgroups have different beliefs about the degree to which law is: 1) manipulable, 2) manipulated, and 3) necessary. Such perceptions must be charted if intrasocietal politics is to be understood. This article traces perceptions of law in one highly inegalitarian relationship in one complex society—male-female relations in Morocco.

Voters rarely take time to inform themselves about the candidates and issues in judicial elections. Uninformed, voters must rely upon some kind of voting cue, such as political party affiliation, incumbency, name familiarity, or the like, to help them cast their ballots in these low-salience elections. This article examines the effects these cues have in determining voter behavior in partisan and nonpartisan elections for state supreme court justices. The results show that party labels structure voter behavior along partisan lines. Without a party cue, however, voting decisions are relatively unstructured and, as examples show, often produce idiosyncratic results. The implications of these findings for the continuing debate over judicial selection are then explored.

This study addresses the issue of rule departures and law-making activity by juries adjudicating guilt in felony cases. Analysis of data from a sample of jury trials suggests considerable conformity to rules. That is, jury verdicts are influenced by evidence of the defendant's guilt and credibility as a witness. Rule departures appear to be limited. They reflect a concern not only with the defendant per se, but also with his choice of a victim and with the seriousness of the prosecution charge against him. The findings suggest that, as actually performed, the jury role is neither clerklike nor discretionary. Rather, it conforms more closely to Kadish and Kadish's (1973) notion of a recourse role, where rule departures occur only under certain circumstances.

This article summarizes a decade of comment on the most common form of “media ombudsman” in the United States and Canada, the newspaper action line. Widely adopted after 1965, action lines were expected by journalists and newspaper owners to play a significant role in increasing social justice, improving the commercial viability and public image of the press, and reforming the news business. The picture of social problems and proposed solutions presented in the printed columns reflects a reformed version of traditional newspaper populism. However, the available evidence suggests that the characteristics of the people who complain to action lines, as well as the economic, bureaucratic, and ideological forces within media organizations, prevent the fulfillment of the promise of social justice implicit in populist rhetoric. Instead of aggressive defenders of the rights of “John Q. Public,” action lines are primarily passive referral services which transmit complaints to traditional public and private authorities. Action lines attract a great many users not only because they promise practical assistance in settling disputes, but also because a response from the newspaper is a significant form of personal recognition and a confirmation that one's problem is legitimate. However, the unsystematic way newspapers process disputes assures that the column is unlikely to have much effect on the institutional sources of chronic grievances. The article concludes with a comparison of action lines to the use of the media by “moral entrepreneurs” to increase the impact of reform movements.