Book Description

This volume contains a collection of original papers by leading legal scholars and social scientists that develop new perspectives on anti-discrimination law, with an emphasis on employment discrimination. The articles were written for a conference held at Stanford Law School in Spring 2003 that was sponsored by the American Bar Foundation and Stanford Law School. The purpose of that conference, this volume, and ongoing work by the Discrimination Research Group based at the American Bar FoundationandtheCenterforAdvancedStudyintheBehavioralSciencesistoadvance the social scienti?c understanding of employment discrimination and the operation of employment discrimination law as a social system, and to consider the legal and policy implications of this emerging body of social science. Now is a pivotal moment for an attempt at a deeper understanding of discrimi- tion and law. After three decades of theoretical development and empirical research onemploymentdiscriminationanditstreatmentinlaw,itiscrucialthatlawyers,social scientists,andpolicymakersassesswhatweknowanddonotknowaboutemployment discrimination and its treatment by law. To date, there are several streams of active research that only occasionally engage with each other. Economists and sociologists continue to debate the extent to which women, minorities, and other traditionally disadvantagedgroupsfacediscriminationinlabormarketsandorganizations. Orga- zation scholars and legal scholars have begun to map the effect of anti-discrimination law on organizational structures and processes, and to raise questions about the extent to which the legalization of organizational employment systems represents symbolic or substantive changes in employment practices.