Social movements have long played a crucial role in American democracy. Commentators frequently describe courts as the engine of social change, and social movements all along the political spectrum have successfully used litigation to impact law and policy. But for all the focus on whether courts are effective agents of social change, there is little research on how social movement organizations choose legal goals in the first place. By shedding light on how legal organizations interact with broader social movements, this research will help explain the role of legal organizations in American democracy.
This project addresses two research questions. (1) How do different legal organizations develop specific legal goals and strategies? (2) How do legal strategies change over time? By comparing different organizations, this research identifies the key role organizations play in deciding how to respond to a changing legal context.
Legal organizations develop an organizational identity that defines who is involved in the organization, what the organization does, and how outsiders perceive the organization. This research demonstrates that these organizational identities guide decisions on legal strategies. When faced with multiple potential strategies, organizations choose strategies most consistent with their broader goals. However, these broader goals and organizational identities can also sometimes change dramatically. This research examines how the legal context and countermovements impact this relationship between broader organizational goals and specific legal strategies.
A multi method approach will be used to compare four legal organizations. Data will include: (1) historical studies of each organization, focusing on how organizations come to adopt specific goals; (2) interviews with lawyers at each organization; (3) interviews with clients of each organization; (4) interviews with lawyers opposing each organization; and (5) surveys of donors to each organization.
Because of the central role litigation plays in social and political change, this research provides insight into the broader functions of the American political system.
This research investigates how public interest legal organizations choose to pursue particular goals and strategies. It particularly asks why similar organizations sometimes pursue different goals, how and when organizations change their goals, and how similar organizations interact with each other. The project addresses these questions through a study of the development of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) legal field. The project focuses on the major LGBT legal organizations but also includes key political organizations and smaller legal organizations. The research for this project included reviewing historical records and interviewing key lawyers involved in these organizations. The researcher reviewed over 160 boxes of records stored at various university libraries and public archives as well as some records stored at the organizations themselves and papers offered by individual lawyers. These records primarily included board minutes, correspondence, newsletters, litigation records, internal memos and letters, and promotional materials. The researcher completed 74 interviews with 65 individuals. This sample covered key leaders from the last 40 years, including the founders of every major LGBT legal organization and key leaders from their whole histories. Contrary to most expectations, the research finds that a high level of dissent within the movement led to a stronger and more dynamic movement field. Lawyers at the various LGBT legal organizations agreed on the overarching goal of dignity and respect for LGBT people. But they disagreed on how to achieve this. This led to constant dissent over strategies, sometimes spilling out into public disagreements. Because this dissent was an expected part of how the organizations interacted with each other, it didn’t threaten their relationships. Instead, this dissent allowed the lawyers to test their legal theories within the confines of the movement before taking them to court. The research leads to two key conclusions. One is the description of the "legal translation paradox." LGBT legal organizations state their goals in broad social terms. For example, they talk about social inclusion of lesbians through the expansion of the meaning of family. But they cannot directly argue for these broader goals in court. Instead they need to articulate narrow goals that fit within the law. Thus, the very act of going to court threatens to lead these organizations away from their original goals. How these organizations deal with this tension is important for how we understand the meaning of "civil rights" and the potential for social movements to protect us. The second key conclusion is about organizational development. Every organization in this project develops a sense of "who we are" and "what we do." This sense of "who we are" and "what we do," or their organizational identity, helps guide how lawyers within an organization decide on goals and strategies. Organizations typically only adopt new goals and strategies when lawyers within them can frame those new goals and strategies as fitting with their organizational identity. This project makes significant contributions to sociological research on law and social movements. In particular, this research compares how similar public interest legal organizations develop goals and strategies. Through this, the research will help explain the conditions that might lead similar organizations to either adopt similar or different goals and strategies. More generally, the research offers additional insight into how organizations develop. It helps answer questions like when organizations are likely to change in response to a changing environment and when they are likely to remain the same despite the changing environment.
