Coercion to compromise : plea bargaining, the courts and the making of political authority / Mary E. Vogel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vogel, Mary E.

Series:

Oxford socio-legal studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plea bargaining--Social aspects--United States--History--19th century.

Plea bargaining.

Plea bargaining--Massachusetts--Boston--History--19th century.

Social classes--Massachusetts--Boston--History--19th century.

Social classes.

History.

Social aspects.

Massachusetts--Boston.

United States.

Physical Description:

xvi, 416 pages, 14 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

This book examines the origins of the controversial practice of plea bargaining, a procedure that appears to reward the guilty. Contrary to popular perception of plea bargaining as an innovation or corruption of the post-World War II years, this study shows that the practice emerged early in the American Republic. It argues that plea bargaining should be seen as part of a larger repertoire of techniques in the Anglo-American legal tradition through which law might be used as a vehicle of rule.

Contents:

1 Plea Bargaining: A Distinctively American Practice 3

The Paradox of Plea Bargaining 5

Beginnings in Partisan Contest and Political Stabilization 7

Origins of Plea Bargaining: Controversial Beginnings 8

Constitutive Structural Change and Human Agency 15

Law as "Modality of Rule": The Making of Political Authority 16

Formation of a Limited State of Courts and Parties 20

State before Nation: Articulating a Relational Political Identity 24

Forging Citizens in the Context of an Extended Franchise 25

Comparatively Informed Historical Analysis 28

2 Liberty and the Republican Citizen: Rise of the Rule of Law 37

Republicanism in the Historical Imagination 38

Contours of Republican Ideology 41

Citizenship in the Republic 45

Republicanism in the Language of Labor 45

"Popular Sovereignty" and the "Rule of Law" 48

The Rise of Liberalism 49

3 Law, Social Order, and the State in Social Theory 53

Law and Political Power: A Macrosocial Approach 53

Law and the Nature, Capacities, and Limits of the State 55

Law and Social Order in Historical Sociology 56

The Autonomy of the State and Popular Consent 60

Law and State Formation: Challenge to "Liberal Myth" 62

Early Sociological Perspectives on Law: Weber and Marx 65

Statist, Conflict, and Contingent Theoretical Traditions of the State Governance and Law 70

Specific Existing Theories about State and Law in Society 77

Continuity and Change: A Generative Sociology 89

4 Contours of Early Plea Bargaining: Patterns of Plea and Concessions 91

The Emergence of Plea Bargaining 93

Popularization of Guilty Pleas 94

Multiplicity of the Forms of Concessions 102

Concessions in the Magnitude of Sentences 103

Type of Sentence Imposed 112

Chances of Acquittal 118

Other Concessions 119

Composite Analysis of the Building Blocks of Bargaining 119

Does Caseload Pressure Play a Part? 121

Pleas and Concessions: The Institutionalization Process 125

Responses to Marx and Weber: Hypothetical Explanations 126

5 Episodic Leniency in Britain and America 131

Social Conflict and Popular Rule: Recrafting Leniency 132

The Cultural Repertoire of Leniency in the Common Law 133

Religious Practice of Admonition: A Cultural Template 140

Stirrings of Direct Compromise in the Civil Sphere 143

Occasional Cases of Direct Compromise in Criminal Courts 143

6 The Emergence of Plea Bargaining: Improvization in Law 147

Timing of Crisis: Convergence of Forces and Innovation 148

Changing Class Structure and Challenge to Elite Control 150

Extension of the Franchise and Movements for Social Reform 163

Law and Social Policy in Sentencing 169

Lawyering in an Era of Popular Politics 171

Popular Challenge to the Common Law 174

Contours of the State 178

The Micropolitics of Consent 183

Plea Bargaining and Popular Consent 187

7 Reconsolidating Political Power in an Age of Popular Politics: Whig Reform and Social Reproduction 189

Second Great Awakening and Ideological Transition 191

Market Revolution and Fears of Disorder 198

Market Culture and Victorian Reconstruction of Punishment 202

Reconsolidation of Elite Power and the Whig Ascendancy 207

Sequencing and Convergence of Causal Forces 217

Political Stabilization and Consent: Reform and Reproduction 220

"Courts and Parties": A Weak Administrative State 222

Bench, Bar, and the Legacy of Post-Revolutionary Federalism 225

Courts and Policy: Control through Traditional Hierarchies 234

Social Class and the Elections of 1836: Collapse of the Anti-Masonic Party 237

Popular Skepticism: A Language of Protest 239

Recrafting the Tradition of Episodic Leniency 241

Transformation of Community and Ambivalent Deference 244

8 The Transformation of Plea Bargaining: Control through Middle Level Institutions and Social Welfare 247

Social Class and Ethnicity as Bases of Conflict 250

An Incongruous Democratic Alliance: Pragmatic Patricians and the Irish Working Class 251

The Faces of Ethnic Status Conflict: Struggle between City and State 253

Stewards of the Transfer of Power: Politics of the Yankee-Irish Democratic Alliance 255

Eclipse of Yankee Leadership: From Municipal Socialism to Progressive Reform 261

Coalition Building and the Rise of Patronage Politics 266

Ethnic Politics and the Socializing Role of Middle-Level Institutions 268

The Courts, Sentencing Policy, and the Mayoral Elections 269

Changing Patterns of Concessions and Their Social Incidence 270

The Struggle for Control of Socializing Institutions 280

9 The Making of Post-Revolutionary Political Authority 285

Reestablishing Authority: A "Rule of Law" 287

Role of the Judiciary: Implementation of "Law Rule" 288

Forms of Authority: Rational-Legal and Traditional 289

Political Equality and Material Inequality: Threat to Property 291

"Americanization" and Homogeneity: Imbuing Industry 293

Immigrant Diversity and Social Disorder 296

Faction and Disaffiliation: Marginals and the Workingmen's Movement 297

Theorizing State Power: Authority, Legitimation, and Consent 298

The Making of Democratic Political Authority 299

"Symbolic Suretyship": Socially Embedded Free Choice 301

Hierarchy Resurgent: Home, Workplace, and Social Control 303

Post-Revolutionary Authority: Modern and Traditional Elements 304

Freedom and the Web of Membership: Facets of Citizenship 305

Markets and Hierarchies: Liberty, Political Subject, and Citizenship 307

Nonresidential Laborers and Community Jurisdiction 309

Property in the Work of Laborers 312

Contractarian Individualism and Republicanism: Autonomous Subjects 314

Dualistic Liberty: Formally Free Labor and Constrained Choice 315

Similarities between Laborers and Criminal Defendants 317

State before Nation: Ethnic Pluralism and National Identity 318

Citizenship as Modern Status Contract 319

Mixed Model of Citizenship: Civic Corporatism 320

Democratic Skepticism and the Oppositional Discourse of Liberalism 321

Authority and Hegemony 322.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [369]-403) and index.

ISBN:

019510174X

9780195101744

0195101758

9780195101751

OCLC:

43811007

Online:

Publisher description