Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights (Chicago Series in Law and Society) - Softcover

Edelman, Lauren B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022640076X ISBN 13: 9780226400761

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2016

Synopsis

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, virtually all companies have antidiscrimination policies in place. Although these policies represent some progress, women and minorities remain underrepresented within the workplace as a whole and even more so when you look at high-level positions. They also tend to be less well paid. How is it that discrimination remains so prevalent in the American workplace despite the widespread adoption of policies designed to prevent it?

One reason for the limited success of antidiscrimination policies, argues Lauren B. Edelman, is that the law regulating companies is broad and ambiguous, and managers therefore play a critical role in shaping what it means in daily practice. Often, what results are policies and procedures that are largely symbolic and fail to dispel long-standing patterns of discrimination. Even more troubling, these meanings of the law that evolve within companies tend to eventually make their way back into the legal domain, inconspicuously influencing lawyers for both plaintiffs and defendants and even judges. When courts look to the presence of antidiscrimination policies and personnel manuals to infer fair practices and to the presence of diversity training programs without examining whether these policies are effective in combating discrimination and achieving racial and gender diversity, they wind up condoning practices that deviate considerably from the legal ideals.

About this title

About the Author

Lauren B. Edelman is the Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law and professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. A past president of the Law and Society Association, she is coeditor of two books, most recently The Legal Lives of Private Organizations.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022640076X
• ISBN 13: 9780226400761
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 363