EEO Law, Courts, and the Production of Symbolic Civil Rights
In Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights (Chicago 2016), Lauren Edelman argues that we have become a symbolic civil rights society in which symbols of equal opportunity and diversity substitute have become accepted measures of compliance, influencing the ways in which lawyers, regulators, and even judges understand civil rights law. This talk highlights three of the trends discussed in the book: the erosion of the progressive vision in the courts, the managerialization of law within organizations, and judicial deference to symbolic forms of organizational compliance.
Lauren Edelman is Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law, and Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley. Her research addresses the interplay between organizations and their legal environments, focusing on employers' responses to and constructions of civil rights laws, workers' mobilization of their legal rights and the internal legal cultures of work organizations. Her most rescent work is Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights (The University of Chicago Press: 2016).