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Although administrative hearings are not formal litigation, the process often resembles traditional adversarial adjudication. There are two parties, one has the burden of proof, both present evidence, and there is a ruling on the legal merits. Substantively, the hearing focuses on eligibility for benefits. Procedurally, the hearing runs like traditional courtroom litigation. Based on direct observation of 45 unemployment insurance claims and interviews with administrative law judges (ALJs), I find ALJs behave differently when there is no legal counsel present. Whereas the law that governs the hearing remains the same, the process for pro se claimants is substantively different.

AbstractSociolegal scholars refer to the invocation of law or rules during a dispute as the mobilization of law. Most studies of the mobilization of law focus on the mobilization of law by people in non‐official capacities, particularly by persons of relatively low social status or in positions of social disadvantage. Early studies debated the effectiveness of court‐centered strategies for social justice, examining whether real social change could be achieved through formal judicial means. Scholars now largely agree that law can be effectively mobilized for social change through both direct formal legal action and the indirect radiating effects of legal mobilization. This is because the influence of law goes beyond the courtroom; rights consciousness and legal mobilization help to transform culture and understandings of social status and power. Currently scholars are turning their attention to the mobilization of law within organizations such as schools and workplaces and the mobilization of rights talk and justice talk in unofficial arenas domestically and internationally.

There is limited scholarship considering how social status factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, and age frame rules in public organizations. Using data collected from semistructured interviews with 49 local government officials, the author argues that there is a paradox of rules. Women and people of color are increasingly entering the ranks of local bureaucracies, but they experience their authority differently than white men. Their claim to authority is challenged more often. Unable to rely on implicit rank and social status as a defense, they must rely instead on official rights and rules. The very meaning of their authority is therefore different: It is more rule and rights based, more formal than informal, more explicit than implicit. Yet, because it is more rule based, formal, and explicit, their authority is also more open to question and challenge, and more resented as an artifice. People of color and women in positions of authority thus face the paradox of rules: They must rely on formal rules as a key basis for their authority, but relying on rules makes their authority seem more artificial than real.

Social status as a cultural institution has a remarkable degree of continuing power, even in bureaucratic settings that are formally committed to office, merit and professional norms. Social status originates outside of organizations and has effects society-wide, but it continues to permeate public bureaucracies in subtle and explicit ways. This project extends research on the mobilization of law by examining how social identity and status influence the conceptualization and mobilization of authority in policing and city administration. As more women and racial and ethnic minorities enter government employment, a growing number of public officials confront what may be called a power paradox, a condition in which a person has high official status but lacks traditional social status and in which the mobilization of authority may be especially problematic. For instance, when a Latina police officer stops an older white male for a traffic violation she clearly enjoys official status and legal authority, but the older white male driver may claim higher social status. Results from narratives collected from officials in policing and city administration regarding challenges they faced to their authority indicate that public officials conceptualize and mobilize their authority in fundamentally different ways depending on their social status. Public officials with traditionally high social status describe their authority as coming from their social status and typically respond to challenges to their authority in assertive ways. Public officials with low social status describe experiencing more challenges to their authority than their middle-aged and older white male counterparts. In order to mobilize their authority, or even prove that they have authority, public officials with low social status must highlight their official status and disassociate themselves from their social status. But, doing so, in itself, makes public officials with traditionally low social status seem "rule bound," "bitchy," "inflexible," and the ...

The goals of valuing social equity and using it as a guide in managing public programs are firmly rooted in the Minnowbrook tradition. Although civil rights activists have long fought for equality, attendees at the Minnowbrook I conference in 1968 were among the first in the field of public administration to directly confront societal inequities by asserting that public administrators should, in addition to valuing efficiency and effectiveness, stress the value social equity in the management and distribution of public services. The field's emphasis on social equity continued on through Minnowbrook II and was identified as a key concern during the most recent Minnowbrook III conference. After briefly summarizing discussion on this topic during Minnowbrook III, this article provides an agenda for advancing the field's commitment to social equity. This agenda centers upon clarifying the conceptual parameters of social equity, transforming the place of social equity in academic instruction, and building upon existing themes and methodologies in social equity research. Last, predictions for the role of social equity at a future Minnowbrook IV conference are presented for further consideration. Adapted from the source document.

Exploring efforts to integrate women into combat forces in the military, we investigate how resistance to equity becomes entrenched, ultimately excluding women from being full participants in the workplace. Based on focus groups and surveys with members of Special Operations, we found most of the resistance is rooted in traditional gender stereotypes that are often bolstered through organizational policies and practices. The subtlety of these practices often renders them invisible. We refer to this invisibility as organizational obliviousness. Obliviousness exists at the individual level, it becomes reinforced at the cultural level, and, in turn, cultural practices are entrenched institutionally by policies. Organizational obliviousness may not be malicious or done to actively exclude or harm, but the end result is that it does both. Throughout this Element we trace the ways that organizational obliviousness shapes individuals, culture, and institutional practices throughout the organization.

For over half a century scholars have considered the "bureaucratic personality" (Merton 1940), a concept synonymous with rigid rule following to overcome organizational alienation and powerlessness among workers. Recently, scholars have introduced the "unbureaucratic personality" (DeHart-Davis, 2007) or "unbureaucratic behavior" (Brockmann, 2017). In this paper, we use both concepts to explore how probation officers and frontline supervisors experience work in one Mid-Atlantic state. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and focus group data, we contend that lack of voice and buy-in for organizational change frames bureaucratic or unbureaucratic behavior in important ways. We argue that, despite participants holding unbureaucratic personality traits, organizational structure and culture in this agency more often shapes frontline workers' bureaucratic behavior, even in the face of organizational reform. When staff exhibit unbureaucratic behavior it appears as a coping mechanism for the rapid, and sometimes, ill-defined or unsupported changes. While normative judgments regarding bureaucratic or unbureaucratic behavior are important, they are often in the eye of the beholder. Here, we extend the concepts of bureaucratic and unbureaucratic behavior to a criminal justice setting, allowing readers to judge the normative implications for themselves.