Attorneys' Influence on the Implementation of School Discipline Reform

• In Event: 47.054 - Analyzing Equity and Equality in School Safety and Discipline

Abstract

Sociologists of law and organizations have long argued that organizations’ responses to legal reforms are principally symbolic and endogenous. As such, sociolegal and organizational scholars have largely overlooked the role and effects of outside actors in policy implementation efforts. Drawing upon 18 months of fieldwork that follows a 2012 law governing school discipline in Massachusetts from the state to the street, I find that organizational outsiders, namely cause lawyers, play an outsized role in efforts to recouple policy and practice. I find that the effectiveness of attorneys’ incursions varies according to the level of the bureaucratic hierarchy (state, district, school), and the aspect of the law (due process or culture change) that they aim to influence.

Author

• Meg Caven, Brown University